


stay with me, go places

by sparksandsalt



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (and osamu and atsumu bc they're twins), (bokuto and akaashi bc author is incapable of writing sad or unrequited bokuaka), Canon Universe, Food, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Time Skip, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24961099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparksandsalt/pseuds/sparksandsalt
Summary: Keiji isn’t even certain that Osamu Miya recognizes him, though they’ve exchanged nods at his brick-and-mortar shop a handful of times before.  They’re far from Tokyo, Keiji supposes, so there is no reason for Miya to expect Keiji in Sendai; but they’re even farther from Osaka, by hours and prefectures and hundreds of kilometers.  There are certainly V.League matches being held this weekend that are far closer to Kansai than the Kamei Arena Sendai.The Black Jackals and Adlers fans must be good business to warrant such a voyage,Keiji concludes, and leaves it at that.Akaashi and Osamu encounter each other again and again along the V.League circuit, and recognize that they are in parallel pursuits.  (Neither of them particularly enjoys being seen.)  (At least there’s onigiri to use as distractions.)
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Miya Osamu
Comments: 342
Kudos: 925
Collections: food fiction for the heart, osaaka





	1. Tsukemono

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Go Places" by The New Pornographers](https://youtu.be/EwH-kkwq1Ws)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quietly, almost gently, Miya adds, “I just feel a little sorry for you, since you’re always the one doin’ the chasin’, between you and Bokuto.”  
>   
>  _Enough,_ Keiji decides. _New strategy._ He leans forward, relishing in the minute shift in Miya’s stance to accommodate him, and allows his bitterness to crest over.  
>   
> “I don’t particularly care about your impression of me, Miya-kun,” Keiji says, low enough that Miya’s staff won’t overhear, “But let’s both acknowledge that I’m not the one who drags his employees a thousand kilometers every week in pursuit of his brother’s games."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Tsukemono_ (translated: “pickled things”): Japanese preserved vegetables, in salt, brine, or rice bran. Served as side dishes to cleanse the palate.  
> 

In Sendai, their interaction is brief and transactional.

Keiji isn’t even certain that Osamu Miya recognizes him, though they’ve exchanged nods at his brick-and-mortar shop a handful of times before. They’re far from Tokyo, Keiji supposes, so there is no reason for Miya to expect Keiji in Sendai; but they’re even farther from Osaka, by hours and prefectures and hundreds of kilometers. There are certainly V.League matches being held this weekend that are far closer to Kansai than the Kamei Arena Sendai.

 _The Black Jackals and Adlers fans must be good business to warrant such a voyage,_ Keiji concludes, and leaves it at that.

“One of each, please,” Keiji says when he reaches the front of Onigiri Miya’s queue. He picks up a serving of _oshinko_ pickles in a crinkly disposable container and slides it across the counter. “This too.”

Osamu Miya, barely sparing a glance at Keiji, peeks into his hot food display case. “We’re out of salmon onigiri at the moment, sir, but we’ll have a fresh batch soon if you’re willin’ to wait.”

Keiji weighs Udai’s impatience against Onigiri Miya’s salmon onigiri, and decides, “I’ll wait then, Miya-kun.”

Miya’s eyes flick upward past the brim of his cap when Keiji speaks his name; then his closed-mouth smile quirks at one corner, just to the warmer side of professional, as he hands Keiji’s change to him.

Keiji wonders if the brush of knuckles against palm, instead of coins rattling on a plastic tray, is some gesture of acknowledgement—perhaps he, like Keiji, feels unmoored as one of the few non-Miyagi natives in attendance—and takes his time returning his wallet to his backpack.

“Onigiri Miya’s rice balls are very good,” Keiji ventures, casual. “Do you still not have a Tokyo branch?”

Miya blinks, as if surprised by the continuation of the conversation, and replies with practiced retail courtesy, “Thank you, not yet, but we’re thinkin’ about it.”

They lapse into clumsy silence. Soon, Miya’s attention is diverted to his next customer, and Keiji allows his own to wander away and join the roaring crowd.

The thread between them is thin and flimsy; though running parallel, their paths have only crossed a few times over the years, and only ever with a volleyball net or shop counter between them. Outside of Atsumu or Bokuto’s company, Keiji supposes that there isn’t much common ground to tread. He opens the small container of pickled radish and pops a slice into his mouth, savoring the crunch and salty, mild sweetness between his teeth.

Abruptly, all noise in the stadium catches like a breath—Keiji glances back toward Miya in his confusion, but Miya’s gaze slips off his customer, off Keiji, and focuses beyond. Keiji, an afterthought, returns his attention to court.

The distant figure of Atsumu Miya slams his first serve out-of-bounds.

The tension breaks, and sound returns to the world; Keiji chuckles. He realizes, belatedly, that he should not laugh at Atsumu Miya in front of his brother—but Keiji only hears a huff of laughter matching his own, and a half-derisive, half-fond, “Lame, tried way too hard to look fancy at the start.”

Atsumu Miya’s head snaps toward them, and Keiji flinches.

 _Twin telepathy?,_ Keiji wonders, bewildered, as Osamu Miya continues to sneer at his glowering twin. _Frightening._

The rallies continue and Keiji spectates from the entrance of the vendor hall, the _oshinko_ slices dwindling point-by-point. A thrill runs through Keiji when the crowd erupts so loudly that he feels it through the soles of his shoes, and he turns to the jumbotron for the replay.

Hinata’s freak-quick, polished to a perfect point with Atsumu Miya; Bokuto, out-of-focus in the background, gawking. Keiji is certain that the same thought crosses both their minds.

 _“Pure fear,”_ Keiji recites, along with the blurry Bokuto projected over the meters-high screen. _“Their first strike is always lethal.”_

Behind him, Miya snorts, jarring Keiji out of his thoughts. When he turns, he finds Miya surveying him with—not amusement, exactly, or even ridicule. Miya tilts his chin upward, a motion of only a few degrees that seems, to Keiji, to go on for miles, and Keiji is suddenly reminded of the appraising gaze the Miya twins had once caged him with five years ago, at their final Spring Nationals.

 _Pity,_ Keiji realizes with a jolt as the brilliant light of the jumbotron at his back casts Miya’s expression into even sharper relief. _He sees you chasing—Osamu Miya sees you._

The empty container crinkles deafeningly in Keiji’s hands. Miya tucks two salmon onigiri into his order, and hefts the bag toward him over the counter.

“I only paid for one,” Keiji says, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice. Miya waves him off.

“As thanks for waitin’, and for old time’s sake,” Miya replies, tone cool and vacant. Their knuckles bump as the handle of the plastic bag passes from Miya’s palm to Keiji’s. “Enjoy Bokuto’s game.”

Keiji is glad when Udai calls out to him over the din. He bows quickly toward Miya and replies, “Thank you, and I hope you enjoy watching Atsumu-san as well.”

※ ※ ※

Keiji’s short reunion with Kageyama and Hinata after the match is fortifying — Hinata, in particular, can still fill Keiji with light just by brandishing his smile in the right direction — but it can hardly compare to Bokuto bolting toward him from the players’ lounge and gathering Keiji up in his arms.

Bokuto is still warm from the showers, smelling of soap and Salonpas and something infinitely familiar and comforting. Keiji wraps his arms around Bokuto’s ample shoulders to reciprocate. Udai yelps as Bokuto lifts all 186 centimeters of Keiji off the ground and spins him, narrowly avoiding the foot Keiji kicks out in surprise.

“Akaashi, it’s been so long!” Bokuto exclaims, eyes alight and searching over Keiji’s face. “We’re gonna get cow tongue and beers after this, right?”

Keiji gently extracts himself from the hold, but allows Bokuto to keep one hand wrapped around his wrist. “Bokuto-san, let’s get the interview sorted first before we think about Kokubuncho.”

“Ten-san’s here too!” Bokuto gasps as he finally turns to Keiji’s companion. Udai lifts one hand up to Bokuto, the other cradling the plastic bag of leftover onigiri to his abdomen. “Ten-san! How are you? Are you getting cow tongue with us?”

“Maybe next time, I’ve got to get back to work, and Akaashi-san already bought me plenty of onigiri,” Udai replies with a mild smile.

“Onigiri Miya’s onigiri,” Keiji adds, and Bokuto’s stomach rumbles as if on cue.

“I think Tsum-Tsum said there’d be some of Myaa-Sam’s onigiri at the team meeting,” Bokuto remarks thoughtfully, staring off into the middle distance.

Bokuto’s Tsum-Tsum, and Bokuto’s Myaa-Sam. Perhaps Bokuto knows.

“Bokuto-san,” Keiji says, “Do you see Osamu Miya often? Or has Atsumu-san mentioned anything about a Tokyo branch of Onigiri Miya?”

Bokuto’s face scrunches up in thought, and a rush of fondness rises up over Keiji. Despite their endless exchange of LINE messages and phone calls, Keiji has missed the immediacy of Bokuto’s elastic expressions before him, or of callused fingers tapping idly on his wrist. He knows that by the next morning Bokuto will board the team’s bus to the airport, and Keiji will be on a Tokyo-bound train—but for now, in this corner of the Kamei Arena Sendai lobby, Keiji allows himself to dwell, delighted, in Bokuto’s glow.

“I don’t think Tsum-Tsum’s said anything about a Tokyo branch,” Bokuto says, deflating with the concession that he could not find any answers for Keiji. He begins to swing Keiji’s arm back and forth entreatingly. “I can ask Myaa-Sam the next time I see him, though! Want me to do that, Akaashi?”

Keiji does not particularly want Osamu Miya to know that he’s asked after him, but, far more ardently, Keiji does not want to deny Bokuto anything that could brighten his expression. Keiji sighs, smiles back, and nods.

※ ※ ※

**[November 17, 2018]**

**tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:08] You’re selling at the game tomorrow too, right? Save me a couple of tuna onigiri for afterward

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:10] Pay up for last time first

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:11] I’m your BROTHER  
[21:11] We shared a WOMB

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:11] Yeah and I saw enough of you there **  
**[21:12] Anyway guess who I saw today  
[21:12] A couple of folks from Karasuno

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:12] Not that exciting  
[21:12] We’re in fucking Miyagi

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:12] Shut up  
[21:13] And Fukurodani’s setter  
[21:13] I think

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:14] Oh no wonder Bokkun raced off  
[21:14] Wait you mean Keiji-kun right

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:14] Who

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:14] Keiji-kun  
[21:14] Bokkun’s buddy  
[21:14] Keiji Akaashi

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:15] ?

 **tsumu_miya**  
[21:15] What the fuck Samu, there’s no way you haven’t met  
[21:15] Our height, black hair  
[21:15] Eats like a metric shit ton of rice every meal

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[21:16] ?  
[21:16] The one that’s friends with Bokuto right?

 **tsumu_miya**  
[21:17] God you’re lucky you share my handsome face  
[21:20] _https://volleyball-monthly.jp/article/2012-12-19-fuku…_  
[21:20] IN THE FIRST PIC  
[21:20] NUMBER 5

* * *

In Ota, their interaction is even briefer—but Keiji ensures that their declarations are mutual.

Miya lifts the brim of his cap with a thumb when Keiji enters the vendor’s hall at the MSBY Black Jackals-Azuma Pharmacy Green Rockets game. Keiji considers pretending that he does not see him and forgoing the precious opportunity for Onigiri Miya rice balls for the day. He can have _karaage_ instead today, or tofu burgers, or even just popcorn.

But Miya, with his black hair and black cap and black sweatshirt, a head taller than virtually everyone in the Ota City General Gymnasium except the volleyball players themselves, cuts an unmistakable figure in the crowd. Keiji, less dramatically attired but just as tall, is also quite certain that he cannot hide.

 _Well, alright then,_ Keiji thinks as he turns on his heel. Camouflage and retreat had not been the best options, regardless: in a game of strategy, on-court or off, Keiji is cautiously confident that he can outmaneuver Osamu Miya.

“Hello again, Akaashi-kun,” Miya says, broad shoulders sloping as he relaxes from his customer service posture in Keiji’s presence. “Back to watch Bokuto?”

“Hello, Miya-kun, yes, I am, one of each, please,” Keiji replies, even though Udai is not with him this week to share. The pickles in their rubber-banded containers are cucumber rather than radish today, and he selects the package with the largest slices for himself.

Miya’s movements as he assembles Keiji’s order are languid and casual, and it needles Keiji. It is a pretense, most likely; Keiji has never been the type to bend to affectation, but it does make him impatient.

“Tsumu says that Bokkun’s been askin’ after me this week,” Miya remarks conversationally, eyes cast down toward his hands, mouth suddenly bowed in a smile. “I’m flattered you’ve even got your best friend on your mission to drag me up to Tokyo.”

Keiji, on his part, refuses to alter his neutral expression. “Not you, specifically, but your franchise.”

“You think the onigiri’s gonna taste the same without my hands makin’ ‘em?” Miya asks. He tucks his smile away, returning to his default of flat blankness, and tips his head to the side. “I’m hurt.”

Even among the onigiri at the stand today, Keiji is certain that the majority were not made by Osamu Miya himself—but he refrains from the argument, in hope that the transaction will end sooner. “Whether or not the onigiri are identical to yours, I think the convenience of a Tokyo branch would make up for any discrepancies.”

But Miya seems to be in no rush, even as the customers behind Keiji shift to the neighboring register in their impatience. “Hmm, I s’ppose so, but Onigiri Miya stayin’ in Kansai gives you more excuses to visit Bokuto, doesn’t it?”

In their high school days on the volleyball court, Keiji had known Osamu Miya as the quiet twin. He misses that now.

“I would visit Bokuto-san and Hinata in Osaka regardless of whether or not your shop was nearby,” Keiji says, placing a few 500 yen coins onto the counter. “I only ask for a Tokyo branch as a customer who enjoys your products. I think Onigiri Miya would be popular here, based on how many people are in your line right now.”

Miya hums in response, taking an unreasonable length of time to calculate the change for 1450 yen from the 1500 yen Keiji had given him. Again, Miya returns Keiji’s change by hand, rather than via the plastic receipt tray; again, their hands brush in the exchange, and this time Keiji is certain that the gesture means something.

When Keiji tries to pull the plastic bag from Miya’s hold, he does not relinquish it. Keiji allows himself a moment to scowl at the floor, face angled away to deprive Miya from any satisfaction. He despises this brand of trivial machismo the most.

“If you’d like,” Miya says, grip firm on the plastic bag next to Keiji’s own fist, “I can talk Bokkun into vistin’ you more often in Tokyo—no new branch of Onigiri Miya required, and you can stop takin’ time out of your busy schedule to follow after him every weekend.”

As evenly as he can, Keiji replies, “The train ride to Ota is only an hour, so I’m not terribly inconvenienced. There’s no reason to trouble Bokuto-san on my behalf.”

Their hands hover over the counter; a joust over the net.

Quietly, almost gently, Miya adds, “I just feel a little sorry for you, since you’re always the one doin’ the chasin’, between you and Bokuto.”

 _Enough,_ Keiji decides. _New strategy._ He leans forward, relishing in the minute shift in Miya’s stance to accommodate him, and allows his bitterness to crest over.

“I don’t particularly care about your impression of me, Miya-kun,” Keiji says, low enough that Miya’s staff won’t overhear, “But let’s both acknowledge that I’m not the one who drags his employees a thousand kilometers every week in pursuit of his brother’s games--or shall I ask Atsumu-san to visit you more often in Osaka, for your convenience?”

New strategy. A mutual declaration. _Pity. Osamu Miya, I see you chasing. I see you too._

For a moment, Miya freezes, as if struck; Keiji tugs the plastic bag out of his hand with ease.

Then, before remorse over his outburst can stab too deeply into Keiji: a smile blooms wide across Miya’s face.

“I’d forgotten, since you’re so reserved when you’re talkin’ about Bokuto,” Miya says, half-hushed, as his eyes narrow and gleam, “But you’ve always been pretty brutal underneath it all, huh, Akaashi-kun?”

Keiji swallows and straightens himself, but his voice still comes out hoarser than he’d like. “I’ll see you at the next game, I suppose, Miya-kun.”

“And I’ll be lookin’ for you,” Miya calls after him as Keiji quickly gathers his purchases and exits from the vendor’s hall.

※ ※ ※

Manga editing schedules and inter-prefecture travel itineraries prevent Keiji from meeting Bokuto after the match, but he does not mind. Next week, as a yearly tradition, Keiji will reunite with the rest of the Fukurodani graduates to watch the MSBY Black Jackals - EJP Raijin game, and meet with both Bokuto and Washio afterward. It will be farther to follow—but there will be more time then, Keiji knows.

Besides, he does not dislike quiet, easy evenings like this: listening to Bokuto’s wandering commentary over speakerphone as Keiji finishes his household chores for the night, or answers work emails at his kitchen counter. Hinata’s laughter bubbles up occasionally in the background, followed by the rumble of Sakusa’s exasperated retort; Keiji hears a thump as Tomas returns Bokuto’s athletic tape, thanking him in sweet, friendly English.

Phone calls are not enveloping arms or a hand on a wrist, but Keiji has learned how to sustain himself on them over the past few years, nevertheless.

“Bokuto-san,” Keiji asks as he stacks his leftover onigiri in the refrigerator for lunch tomorrow, “Does Osamu Miya vend at every Black Jackals game?”

“Myaa-Sam? Not _every_ game, and only sometimes at other tournaments—but he’s there for most of the V.League matches, yeah! We eat a lot of Myaa-Sam’s onigiri during our post-game meetings!”

Keiji unwraps the last onigiri in the bag, deciding that an occasional late-night snack is acceptable. A sigh of satisfaction escapes his lips as he takes the first bite. Onigiri Miya’s rice truly is incomparable: springy and tender but never mushy, with just the right amount of salt for every bite. The bright, sour flash of _umeboshi_ at the center whets Keiji’s appetite further, but he forces himself not to deplete his lunch for the next day.

“I’m a little jealous,” Keiji confesses as he finishes the onigiri.

Bokuto laughs, filling Keiji’s quiet apartment with the sound. “I’ll steal some and bring them to you next time!”

“It’s alright, Bokuto-san, I buy quite a lot at every game already,” Keiji replies, smiling. “And I meant that Osamu Miya is fortunate to have a reason to attend so many of your games. I wish I could attend more matches, like he does.”

“Oh!” Bokuto, preening, sounds pleased at the thought. “Akaashi, I think that would be fun too!”

※ ※ ※

**[November 25, 2018]**

**sunarin_0125** **  
**[13:06] sup osamu  
[13:06] you’re gonna sell at the bj - ejp match next week right

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[13:39] Yeah

 **sunarin_0125** **  
**[13:42] nice  
[13:42] keep 2 on the side for komori, filling doesn’t matter  
[13:42] wait no he says not sesame  
[13:43] he’ll pay you before the game

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[13:45] He can have Tsumu’s

 **sunarin_0125** **  
**[13:47] nice **  
**[13:48] btw any chance of you selling at the ejp - red falcons game the week after?  
[13:48] i’m meeting up with aran after  
[13:48] it’s our chance to hang out without atsumu

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[13:50] HA  
[13:50] Now I wish I could  
[13:51] But we’re signed up to follow the Black Jackals all season, sorry

 **sunarin_0125** **  
**[13:51] boo  
[13:51] just ditch atsumu already  
[13:51] he’s not worth it

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[13:52] Yeah, yeah  
[13:52] Any more of your matches in the same stadium?

 **sunarin_0125** **  
**[13:53] don’t think so, not unless we’re all in the final 6  
[13:53] and even if we are, i’m sure atsumu would force us to let him join

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[13:54] He would

 **sunarin_0125** **  
**[13:54] he would.

* * *

In Matsumoto, they come to an agreement.

“Oh, Akaashi-kun, we can’t keep seein’ each other like this,” Miya deadpans when Keiji reaches the front of the line with Shirofuku. “Not if you’ve had a girlfriend this whole time.”

Shirofuku looks up from the team’s onigiri orders on her phone, sleepy eyes meandering between Keiji and Osamu Miya. Keiji suppresses a groan.

“No, Shirofuku-san was a club manager during my first and second year at Fukurodani,” Keiji explains, more to preserve Shirofuku’s dignity than to enlighten Miya. “Every year, the alumni try to attend one of Bokuto-san and Washio-san’s matches together.”

Miya’s eyebrows rise a fraction, surprisingly soft; then, instantly, his face flattens. If Keiji had not been so surprised by it, he would have thought he imagined it.

“That’s a cute tradition,” Miya says, professionally listless once again. “What can I get for the two of you?”

Between Keiji and Shirofuku’s extensive individual orders and those of the rest of the team, Miya has them wait at the side of the booth while his staff prepares their batch. Keiji pays for two side orders of _umeboshi_ for them to snack on while they wait, and savors the pleasant sourness of the pink-red fruit as he watches the crowd mill past.

“I didn’t know you were friends with someone from Inarizaki, Keiji-kun,” Shirofuku remarks in her light, lilting way as she chews on her fourth _umeboshi_.

“We’re only acquaintances,” Keiji replies, at the same time that Miya calls from his booth, “We sure are, ma’am.”

Keiji stares at Miya. Miya’s expression does not change at all.

“Speaking of high school, Miya-kun,” Shirofuku says over Keiji’s shoulder, “Isn’t Rintarou Suna of the EJP an Inarizaki graduate like you?” 

Miya gives her his polite, closed-mouth customer service smile, then returns to restocking the hot food display case. “Yes, we were in the same year, along with Akaashi-kun.”

At this, Shirofuku’s chewing halts. Keiji is certain of her thoughts: during Keiji’s third-year captaincy, Fukurodani had lost in straight sets to Inarizaki in the Spring Interhigh quarterfinals, in a crushing end to Keiji’s volleyball career. It had devastated Keiji at the time; Miya had not even remembered Keiji’s name two weeks ago, so Keiji presumes that he barely registers the memory.

The last dregs of resentment might dwell somewhere in Keiji’s heart, but the loss hasn’t truly bothered Keiji in years. There are newer, more pressing aspects of Osamu Miya to make Keiji wary.

“Inarizaki defeated us quite soundly at my final Spring Interhigh,” Keiji offers up plainly, preferring momentary awkwardness to allowing the issue to fester. “As far as setter-captains go, it’s no surprise that Atsumu-san came out on top.”

He watches Miya straighten to his full height, and train his eyes on Keiji. He knows now what pity looks like on Miya’s face; he does not find it there.

 _Another joust?_ , his expression suggests instead.

“Dunno how you two compared as captains, but Tsumu _was_ awarded best setter that year,” Miya replies, tone indecipherable. “Are you askin’ me to apologize on his behalf? ‘Cause if I start apologizin’ for all the things that Tsumu’s ever done, we’d be here a _long_ time.”

Keiji allows himself to smile a little at the prospect.

“No, I don’t think it’s necessary for winners to apologize, especially in sports,” Keiji says as he pokes through the remaining _umeboshi_ in his container. He selects one, casual, and adds, “But if you’re feeling remorseful, it would console me, even all these years later, if you just _opened a Tokyo branch of Onigiri Miya._ ”

Miya lets out a short, startled puff of laughter at the sudden request. Keiji pops another _umeboshi_ into his mouth and congratulates himself on breaking Miya’s composure first: another joust in his favor. Miya, arms akimbo, shakes his head and sighs.

“I told you already, Akaashi-kun, we’re _thinkin’_ about it,” Miya repeats, without any real heat behind it.

The tension between them breaks quietly, like heat in the evening: not all jousts are won with brute force, Keiji thinks. They both know where to dig in to hurt, but sometimes the soft lob of an unanticipated joke is enough to tip the balance.

“Shirofuku-san is a fan of your onigiri too,” Keiji adds. “Does that convince you any further in your plans for a Tokyo branch?”

 _“I am a fan of your onigiri,”_ Shirofuku repeats emphatically. Keiji watches a profound strand of recognition—a connection between fellow gourmands and large eaters—pass between Shirofuku and Miya. What an unexpected understanding. Perhaps Keiji _would_ get a Tokyo branch after all.

The corner of Miya’s mouth just barely angles upward, like an inside joke, like a secret, and he says, “Well, how ‘bout we just say that a Tokyo branch is on the table, and leave it at that for the day.”

 _A truce for now._ Truthfully, Keiji wonders why either he or Miya feels the need to frame their interactions so antagonistically: Keiji isn’t particularly competitive in matters of social dominance, and he cannot imagine Miya sees Keiji as a threat. Perhaps, with only the volleyball court as common context, competition is the natural rhythm they fall into.

_Or, perhaps, being seen is frightening. And the mutual knowledge that we see the exact same thing in each other--that our pursuits are the same--makes it all the more frightening still._

Ah. Keiji does not want to dwell on this thought.

“In the meantime,” Keiji asks, to tamp down his thoughts before he no longer can, “What brand of rice do you use, Miya-kun? I think I’d like to purchase it for myself.”

Closing the glass door of the display case, Miya frowns. “Akaashi-kun, do you think the thing that makes my onigiri so good is the brand of rice?”

“No,” Keiji replies, truthfully. He’s had enough onigiri in his lifetime to know that. “But if you’re not planning on a Tokyo branch any time soon, I think that buying the same brand of rice would be the closest thing. The rice in your onigiri is superb.”

Shirofuku, crumpling her container and throwing it into the nearby trash bin, nods. “It’s so fluffy and soft.”

“But it’s firm enough that every grain maintains its integrity, even when made into a rice ball,” Keiji continues, passing Shirofuku his own empty _umeboshi_ package for disposal. “The rice is shiny, and the flavor is clean. Lately, because I’ve been eating your onigiri more often, I’ve noticed how much the rice I typically buy pales in comparison, though that may be the fault of my own preparation.”

When Keiji looks up, Miya is still staring at him—but this time, Keiji finds that he can’t quite read the expression. Keiji furrows his brows. He wonders if he’s again wandered into some unexpected, delicate territory.

“Don’t worry, Osamu just gets stupidly intense about his rice,” a voice calls from the other end of the booth. Two figures, caps pulled low over their masked faces, bow their heads at Keiji and Shirofuku from behind Miya: one slouching forward with his hands in the pockets of his jersey, and the other counting coins in an outstretched palm.

“Are players allowed in general admittance areas?” Miya asks, and the slouching figure snickers.

“Washio-san’s probably getting chewed out on our behalf, but Komori said he needed his Onigiri Miya fix,” Rintarou Suna replies, tugging his facemask down over his chin with a crooked finger. He knocks Miya lightly with his elbow, hands still planted in his pockets. “And quit frowning at your customers, Osamu—though I guess you of all people _would_ have an existential crisis about rice in the middle of work.”

“It’s because it’s Kita-san’s rice,” Miya mutters as he accepts Motoya Komori’s coins in exchange for two salted _kombu_ onigiri.

 _Kita-san?_ There is something familiar in the name, but Keiji, so many years removed from the high school volleyball circuit, can’t quite place it.

“And I heard him say nothing but good things about Kita-san’s rice,” Suna replies evenly. “Like, _extensively_. I thought you were the only one who could go on about rice like that—well, you and Kita-san, nowadays.”

Keiji finally hooks the name out of his memory. _Shinsuke Kita_. A stillness, serene, among the vivid flashes of black, white, and maroon.

“Kita-san? Your captain from Inarizaki is a rice farmer now?”

Suna and Miya both turn to Keiji simultaneously, and the sudden magnitude of their attention startles him.

“Yes?” Miya says: less an answer, more a challenge.

 _Osamu Miya’s tender spots are not where I expected,_ Keiji thinks, a little alarmed. _Atsumu-san, and rice, and his old captain from Inarizaki._

He spares at glance at Shirofuku, perhaps the most lost in the conversation among them, before carefully and honestly replying, “I think it's fortunate that you can continue to support each other all these years later. Agriculture is an admirable profession, especially for our generation. Farmers are far more essential to society than, say, a manga editor like myself.”

Keiji pauses to study Miya’s face again, quite certain that there was a right response to defuse the situation, but unsure if he had found it. Miya is not inscrutable, but he does not have Bokuto’s evident, dramatic expressions either: Miya’s are composed of millimeter, millisecond shifts, just flickers of candor that break through like something dangerous in deep water.

“In any case, you’re all definitely more essential than volleyball players!” Komori interrupts cheerfully from behind Suna and Miya. He smiles at them with rice-swollen cheeks, round eyebrows high and friendly. “If Suna and I died, society would be totally fine!”

“You’ll throw up if you eat too much right before a match,” Suna advises coolly.

“I’m only gonna eat _one_ ,” Komori replies before bending forward to look more carefully at Keiji and Shirofuku. He grins, half-apologetic, and says, “Sorry if I guess wrong, but—Fukurodani, right?”

Komori's smile brightens when they nod, and he paws at Suna’s shoulder. “Aw man, that’s so nice! Remember Washio-san mentioning that he was gonna get hotpot afterwards with his old volleyball club? Sakusa said he’d only eat dinner with me if the Raijin win!”

Suna’s calculated expression is more difficult to read than even Miya’s, but Keiji senses in Suna’s posture that his response from earlier had been enough to mollify him. Suna loosens, lolling a bit toward Keiji in a way that feels nonchalant rather than threatening, and says, “In any case, Fukurodani-san, Kita-san’s based in Hyogo. He’s still pretty localized to Kansai, so he might not sell this far north. Right, Osamu?”

Miya nods affirmatively.

Keiji is surprised by the intensity of his own disappointment, and Komori laughs good-naturedly at the dip in Keiji’s shoulders. Komori turns to Miya and pipes, “C’mon, Osamu-kun, can’t you ask your ex-captain to ship a couple of bags of rice to Tokyo?”

Miya glances from Komori to Keiji, crosses his arms, and tips his head back to consider the ceiling. “Kita-san’s my supplier now, though. Askin’ a business partner for too many personal favors is kinda unprofessional.”

Snorting, Suna mutters, “Little Osamu-kun’s worried about being _unprofessional._ ”

“Then, like, as an ex-teammate!” Komori persists, winking at Keiji encouragingly. “You can ask him for a favor as one of his beloved juniors, right?”

“Bad idea, the Miya’s were goddamn terrors as Kita-san’s underclassmen,” Suna says, smirk only widening.

Miya, restocking his paper napkin dispenser with disinterest, replies, “Don’t you have warmups or somethin’ to get to, Rintarou?”

Suna cackles, delighted at the rise he got out of Miya, just as one of Miya’s staff members wheels in a cart piled with two cardboard trays. Her eyes widen, starstruck, at Suna and Komori standing at the corner of the booth.

“You can ignore those two,” Miya says to her, lifting the order from the cart. “The customers are on that end.”

Keiji adjusts his backpack straps and accepts the larger of the cardboard boxes from Miya’s hands, mouth almost watering at the smell of rice and roasted seaweed. As the weight hefts into Keiji’s arms, Keiji looks at Miya over the frames of his glasses and says, “I’d rather not disturb your relationship with Kita-san, so please just convey my and Shirofuku-san’s appreciation to him, if you could.”

Another shift in Miya’s expression—a millimeter, a millisecond. Keiji isn’t quite familiar enough to interpret it, even if he does catch it.

“I’ll pass along your regards,” Miya simply replies.

Keiji turns away and fishes his phone from his coat pocket, typing a quick message to Sarukui about where to meet up to find their seats. Soon, Shirofuku is at his side with her own box of onigiri.

A drawn-out sigh sounds from behind them.

“Wait,” Miya calls after Keiji, a shade of defeat in his voice. “Gimme your contact information. I’ll ask Kita-san if he can make an exception.”

Keiji surprises even himself with the speed at which he returns to the booth to offer up his phone, all while balancing the bulky cardboard box on one arm. His face warms in his excitement. “Thank you, Miya-kun.”

Miya reaches his phone across the counter to put in the radius of Keiji’s and taps at the screen to transfer their information. “No promises that it’ll happen.”

“I appreciate the effort regardless,” Keiji replies as he draws his phone back to scan over the new contact. _Osamu Miya: cell phone number, business number, LINE contact, email._ As he locks his phone, Keiji spots Shirofuku hungrily eyeing the onigiri in her box, and quickly adds, “Thank you again, but our friends are probably wondering where we are, so please excuse us.”

Miya tips his hat at Keiji. Keiji nods. Then Keiji strides away, calculating the best way to distract Shirofuku from devouring their onigiri before the match even begins.

※ ※ ※

Suna leans over Osamu’s shoulder, squinting at the phone screen.

“That’s a weird way of spelling ‘Keiji’,” he remarks. “Oh, but look, his ‘ _ji’_ is the same character as ‘ _Osamu’_.”

※ ※ ※

At the hotpot restaurant afterward, Bokuto wedges himself between Akaashi and Suzumeda, blithely ignoring all of Konoha’s protestations.

“I want to sit by Akaashi,” Bokuto insists, bracing himself around Keiji’s arm like a vice. “Akaashi’s the only one who’ll trade his meat for my vegetables!”

“Eat your own damn vegetables, you’re an adult and a pro athlete! Besides, I don’t want to be at the same pot as both you _and_ Shirofuku—Akaashi and I won’t get to eat _anything!_ ” Konoha shoots back, livid. “Onaga, switch seats with me!”

Onaga, the most junior in the group, looks nervously at the rest of his seniors. Washio wordlessly wraps a protective arm around the back of Onaga’s chair.

“Konoha, be a good upperclassman _,_ ” Komi says sternly. “Just grin and bear it.”

Konoha nearly screams.

Keiji, ignoring everything but the familiar weight against his side, presses the call button for a waiter, and orders himself, Bokuto, and Shirofuku extra bowls of rice.

※ ※ ※

**[December 02, 2018]**

**OnigiriMiya** **  
**[10:45] Hello Kita-san  
[10:45] I have a personal favor to ask you  
[10:45] It isn’t urgent, please get back to me when it's convenient for you

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[11:38] Hello, Osamu, I hope you’re doing well. No need to be so formal. What can I do for you?

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:40] I have an acquaintance in Tokyo interested in your rice  
[11:40] Not for business  
[11:41] For home use  
[11:41] He’s a pretty big fan of it  
[11:41] Is there any chance of you shipping a couple of bags to Setagaya for him?

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[11:42] If you, Osamu, say that your friend enjoys my rice, then I’m sure he must be rather fond of it. I currently don’t ship to Tokyo, but I have some colleagues who may be willing to add a few bags to their shipments up north. I will have to talk to them first, but it shouldn’t be a problem.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:42] Thank you, Kita-san  
[11:42] I’ll email you his info so you can write up an invoice for me

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[11:43] You’re welcome, Osamu. How are you? As well as Atsumu? Neither of you have visited Hyogo since Obon, I believe. I’m sure your family must be missing you both.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:45] We’re both keeping busy nowadays  
[11:45] I’ll be back for New Years  
[11:45] And Tsumu’s gonna head home for the mid-season break  
[11:45] He’s doing great this season, the Black Jackals might make it to the Final 6 this year

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[11:46] That’s exciting, please extend my congratulations. 

**OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:46] Suna and Aran’s teams are doing pretty well too  
[11:47] I’m sure Aran told you about the Red Falcon’s win against VC Kanagawa yesterday

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[11:47] He did, and I watched the televised match last night as well. And how are you, Osamu?

[11:54] ?

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:55] Sorry **  
**[11:55] Business is good, I’m keeping busy

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[11:56] I’m glad to hear that your business is doing well. I’ve been meaning to visit Osaka to talk to some of my vendors. I’ll drop by your shop while I’m there.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:57] You’re always welcome to visit, Kita-san  
[11:57] But I’m sure you’re busy  
[11:58] You don’t have to do that

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[11:59] Certainly, I know I don’t have to. However, I don’t think it’s strange for me to occasionally want to visit a junior and friend. I would much rather speak to you properly in-person than over phone messages or email.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[12:00] Sure  
[12:00] I’m looking forward to it  
[12:00] Thank you, Kita-san  
[12:00] Really

 **KitaShinsuke**  
[12:00] You’re welcome.

* * *

In Setagaya, Keiji returns from work to a note in his apartment mailbox:

> _Akaashi-san,_
> 
> _The grocer from Kobayashi Market dropped off a delivery for you this afternoon from “Shinsuke Kita-san, Hyogo”. It’s quite heavy, so I didn’t want to leave it outside your door in case it was an expensive purchase._
> 
> _Please accept your package from the front office at your earliest convenience._

※ ※ ※

In Setagaya, Keiji stores the convenience store bento he had purchased for dinner in the fridge, and cooks a pot of Proper Hyogo rice.

※ ※ ※

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Me: “Akaashi and Osamu have more than onigiri in common--let’s write about them both being characters who were necessary for Bokuto and Atsumu in high school but are no longer needed by them as adults, and the anxieties that come when they realize their other halves will quickly advance out of their reach.”  
> -Also me: “R I C E ? ? ? RICE!!!”  
> -The 治 for “ji” and “osamu” is common [ex. Watari’s first name (Shinji = 治), Futakuchi’s first name (Kenji = 堅治), etc.], so it’s not really worth remarking on in the end, lmao… I just thought it was a fun coincidence!!  
> -Match locations are based loosely on the 2018-2019 V.League circuit  
> (-August edit: Edited the post-Sendai match scene to align a bit better with Ch. 401!)


	2. Chabashira

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “At sixteen, it felt exciting to form such a close connection with another person—but now, in my twenties, I’m not sure what else I’m meant to look for,” Keiji says to the tea stem in his cup. He takes a sip and swallows it, the warmth traveling down his throat into his chest. “I understand that the closest bond a person forms in their life isn’t always romantic, but that seems like a nasty thing to explain to someone who wants it to be.”
> 
> “Hmm, well, try bein’ a twin,” Miya replies after a moment. Keiji looks up from Miya’s reflection in the tea to Miya himself. His gaze is still cast down as he wipes his hands on a dishcloth, but his voice is careful: commiserative, but not pitying. “Welcome, I’ve been in this boat since birth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Chabashira_ (translated: “tea pillar”): A tea stalk floating upright in tea. A good omen.  
>   
> Some geography notes:  
> \- I based MSBY in Hirakata, Osaka, because that’s where the Panasonic Panthers (the V.League team that MSBY is likely based on) are located. Osaka City, where I based Onigiri Miya, is ~30 minutes away by train.  
> \- Osaka is a prefecture next to Hyogo, where Kita lives/works and the Miyas are from. Osaka is ~500 km (~300 mi) southwest of Tokyo.  
> \- Setagaya, where Akaashi lives, and Chiyoda, where Akaashi works, are special wards in Tokyo.  
> (tl;dr: Osamu is in Osaka near MSBY and Kita, and Akaashi is 500 km away in Tokyo)

In Setagaya, Keiji opens the lid of his rice cooker and watches white steam billow to the ceiling.

His mother scolds him about his habit of making meals out of rice and pickled sides, but he can’t help it: during the weeks that stretch on far too long, rice warms and fills him, and cold, salty _tsukemono_ revives him. Besides, most of the pickled dishes in his fridge are hers: now that she’s reduced her teaching load at the university, Keiji’s mother has found time for recreational homemaking in the empty nest.

Keiji uncaps a jar of his mother’s vinegar-preserved cucumber and spoons the slices into a serving dish. Then, carefully, he uses a paddle to fluff the top few centimeters of rice, and scoops a serving into a bowl. The rice glistens under the kitchen lights. His glasses fog over.

 _Heaven,_ Keiji thinks.

※ ※ ※

Once, when they were in university together, Shirofuku had told Keiji that taste and smell were interwoven senses, and nerves for smell led right to the part of the brain where memories were stored.

Keiji can’t recall the names of the anatomical structures Shirofuku had been memorizing that evening—just the way her hair had parted when she looked up from her flashcards, and her voice when she remarked, “ _I guess that’s why watermelon in the summer tastes so good lately, even though you and I are the only ones left in this part of Tokyo to eat it together.”_

 _“Only for now,”_ Keiji replied, not quite sure what else to say.

Shirofuku smiled, and offered him a Pretz stick from her snack pile. “ _I think all our paths are pointing in pretty different directions, Keiji-kun. They probably won’t happen to cross again.”_

 _“Then we’ll have watermelon next summer,”_ Keiji said. He accepted the Pretz and bit into it. _“And if it isn’t enough, we’ll put in the effort to make sure we all meet up again, even if it’s only once in a while.”_

※ ※ ※

The rice tastes like Hirakata.

Or, Atsumu’s laughter every time Bokuto grabbed Keiji’s elbow or the hem of his coat, as if Keiji’s sudden appearance in the context of his new daily life was so astonishing that he feared Keiji might vanish if he didn’t hold on;

Or, the thirty-minute train ride to Osaka City that Bokuto had insisted upon, even though Keiji had precious few days left of Golden Week before he would have to return to lecture halls and novels penned by long-dead men;

Or, the small, newly renovated shop whose details Keiji barely recalls because Bokuto, bright like sun on snow, was listing off the onigiri fillings he had tried-and-loved and tried-and-only-liked, and Keiji allowed himself only a moment to look away from him to nod at the man who shared his face with Atsumu Miya.

The rice tastes like Hirakata—and like all the volleyball arenas, strung from prefecture to prefecture, that Keiji follows Bokuto through too.

 _You’re always the one doin’ the chasin’,_ Miya had said to him, gently.

Keiji scoops a second serving of rice, then a third. He goes into his fridge and digs out the glass jars of pickled _daikon_ radish with chilli, brined cabbage with kelp slices, pitted _umeboshi,_ and bright yellow half-moons of _takuan_ until his kitchen counter is covered with them. He alternates between the steam-warmth and the refrigerator-cold, the filling starch and the acidic, salty crisp, until he reminds himself that it’s nearly 10 pm, and he shouldn’t eat four cups of rice by himself in one sitting.

Perhaps Keiji is always the one doing the chasing. So is Osamu Miya.

Keiji eats, and he remembers.

The pity makes the rice no less delicious.

※ ※ ※

**[December 05, 2018]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[12:18] Miya-kun, I received Kita-san’s rice yesterday evening—thank you for arranging the delivery.  
[12:18] It truly is exceptional rice. Please convey my appreciation and gratitude to Kita-san as well.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[12:32] Will do  
[12:33] Glad you like it

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[12:36] Yes, the taste makes me nostalgic for my visits to Hirakata  
[12:36] I even replaced the rice in my store-bought bento with Kita-san’s rice for lunch today  
[12:37] I tried to make onigiri with it, but mine were  
[12:37] Sub-optimal  
[12:37] Comparatively, to Onigiri Miya onigiri

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[12:38] I told you there was more to Onigiri Miya than the rice brand

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[12:39] Unfortunately, this weekend’s match in Hiroshima is too far for me to attend, so it will be a while until I can enjoy the genuine article again. My homemade onigiri will have to suffice.  
[12:39] (Unless you open a Tokyo branch in the near future.)

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[12:39] (It’s not happening, Akaashi-kun)

 **k_akaashi**  
[12:39] (I expected as much...)  
[12:40] How much do I owe you for the rice and delivery costs?

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[12:40] Don’t worry about it  
[12:40] It’s on the house

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[12:41] I insist  
[12:41] At least allow me to pay Kita-san for the cost of the rice itself

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[12:41] Kita-san’s making me take him out to tea in return for the favor  
[12:41] And it’s hard to calculate the cost of delivering one bag in a mass shipment  
[12:41] It’s really fine  
[12:41] Enjoy the rice

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[12:42] Well, thank you again.  
[12:42] I hope you enjoy your tea with Kita-san.  
[12:42] Please continue to feed Bokuto-san and Hinata well.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[12:42] (Ha)  
[12:42] I’ll do my best, Akaashi-kun

* * *

In Chiyoda, Keiji spends his lunch break on a phone call outside the Weekly Shonen Vie offices.

“Myaa-Sam delivered a bunch of onigiri to the dorms!” Bokuto gushes, and Keiji imagines that, though five hundred kilometers apart, he and Bokuto are having lunch together. “He even saved the _sukiyaki_ ones for me!”

“That sounds nice, Bokuto-san,” Keiji says, unwrapping his own onigiri from its plastic. Over the past few days, Keiji has become marginally better at shaping them properly—and though they can’t compare to the onigiri prepared by Miya’s hands, Keiji thinks that, thanks to the quality of Kita’s rice, his onigiri are quite good. “Be careful not to eat too much white rice at once.”

Bokuto makes a petulant, deflated noise at the reminder. “Yeah, my nutritionist said I have to eat brown rice with dinner now… But, Akaashi, when did you become friends with Myaa-Sam?”

“I’m not particularly friends with him,” Keiji replies, breathing warmth into his hands before digging in his coat for his second onigiri. “I think we’re more like two people who recognize that we’re in similar circumstances.”

“I don’t really get that!” Bokuto says, and Keiji can tell from the sound of his voice that his mouth is full of beef and rice. Keiji wishes again that the rice ball in his hand was an Onigiri Miya onigiri. “But Myaa-Sam said that he was doing you a favor when he brought us onigiri.”

“Me?” Keiji considers that he _had_ asked Miya to feed Bokuto and Hinata, but he’d meant it more as a conversation closer than an actual request. He’d known that Osamu Miya was sensitive about food, but perhaps asking him to feed someone, even as a formality, would become a matter of his personal and professional pride.

 _I’ll have to be more careful_ , Keiji thinks. “I asked Miya-kun to continue to feed you well, after he did me a favor. I suppose he took my wish seriously.”

“Myaa-Sam did you a favor before?”

“He sent me a bag of rice from Hyogo.”

“I think you’re _friends,_ Akaashi, if he’s sending you rice from all the way down here!” Bokuto says, and Keiji can hear the affection in his words. “That’s nice! I’m glad you and Myaa-Sam are getting along! I’m gonna tell him to keep feeding you too, okay?”

 _Getting along,_ Keiji repeats to himself doubtfully. He balls up the plastic wrap and heads into the lobby to find a garbage bin. “I appreciate the sentiment, Bokuto-san, but I’ll just buy his onigiri the next time I see him. I have to return to work now, goodbye.”

“ _Akaashi_ ,” Bokuto whines, just as Keiji ends the call.

When he returns to his desk, Keiji finds that Bokuto has sent him a photo of Hinata holding up four tuna mayo onigiri, beaming.

※ ※ ※

In Setagaya, the following Tuesday, Keiji receives his second bag of Proper Hyogo rice.

※ ※ ※

**[December 11, 2018]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[21:08] Miya-kun, I apologize for messaging you so late in the evening--I received a second bag of Kita-san’s rice today. Thank you, I very much appreciate it, but I live alone, so I’m less than a third finished with the first bag.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:21] Oh  
[21:21] Really?

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:22] ... **  
**[21:22] Miya-kun  
[21:22] Is your diet okay  
[21:22] Like, your daily intake of rice

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:24] You sound like my mom, Akaashi-kun  
[21:24] Sorry, I thought you’d share with your girlfriend  
[21:24] She seemed like a real rice fan too

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:25] 5 kg in one week is a lot of rice even for two people. And, again, Shirofuku-san is not my girlfriend.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:25] Oh  
[21:25] Really?

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:26] …  
[21:26] We dated briefly in university, but we’re just good friends now.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:27] (I wasn’t THAT far off the mark then)  
[21:28] Anyway I’ll ask Kita-san to stop the deliveries  
[21:28] Sorry about the mix up

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:29] No, it’s alright  
[21:30] I’d actually like to ask you to continue the deliveries, if possible  
[21:30] Once a month or so seems more reasonable  
[21:30] I’ve grown very fond of Kita-san’s rice

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:31] Yeah  
[21:31] Let me ask Kita-san  
[21:31] It should be ok

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:32] Thank you, Miya-kun  
[21:32] And I heard from Bokuto-san that you’ve been bringing onigiri to the Black Jackals. I appreciate your hard work.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:32] Yeah  
[21:33] Well it’s my job to keep Tsumu and his buddies fed

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:34] Well, whether for professional or for personal reasons, I do appreciate it.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:35] You’re making me blush, Akaashi-kun (*/ω＼*)

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:36] Good night, Miya-kun.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:36] Night

※ ※ ※

**[December 11, 2018]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[21:40] Shirofuku-san, I apologize for messaging you so late--I’ve come into a 5 kg bag of Onigiri Miya’s brand of rice, would you like to take it?

 **shirofuku_yu_ki_e**  
[20:41] Y E S

* * *

In Osaka City, the balance shifts a bit.

Keiji does his best to flatten his expression by the time he reaches the front of Onigiri Miya’s lengthy queue. Osaka is Miya’s territory, unlike all their dealings before—Keiji does not have the defense of geography here.

Miya’s surprise at Keiji’s presence registers in the barest flick of his eyelid. Before Keiji can say more than a cursory “Hello, Miya-kun”, Miya’s hands are already gathering his order: one of each onigiri, and a side of eggplant _nukazuke_.

“Akaashi-kun, if I knew you’d be comin’, I would’ve brought more stock,” Miya says offhandedly as he lines up the onigiri at the bottom of the bag. Keiji listens for animosity, but hears none: just easy ribbing, no challenge to a joust today.

“The manga artist I supervise finished his work early, so the opportunity arose,” Keiji replies, handing over his money. “I wouldn’t usually travel this far, but the next several matches are even farther, and I don’t have to worry about lodging when the match is held near Bokuto-san’s apartment.”

Miya makes a comprehending noise, half-distracted by the register. Their fingers bump when he returns Keiji’s change, in a touch free of intention; Miya passes the plastic bag over without resistance, leaving Keiji clutching his onigiri and wallet with less than a minute elapsed.

Keiji is surprised by the shortness of their exchange when there isn’t provocation to prolong it.

“Is Onigiri Miya open tomorrow?” Keiji finds himself asking, unsure of what he had expected from their interaction today—curious that he had expected anything from Miya at all—but knowing that it was not this.

Miya peeks over Keiji’s shoulder to see if there are customers, then shifts his weight to one side, leaning loosely against the booth counter. “Haven’t you had enough of Kita-san’s rice yet, Akaashi-kun?”

“No, never, though I did give the second bag to Shirofuku-san. I think she’s nearly done with it.”

“I thought you said it’d take a month to finish a bag.”

“I did, and although Shirofuku-san is a nutritionist by profession, I find myself worrying about her diet,” Keiji admits, looking gravely into the plastic bag in his own hands. “Lately, my own diet hasn’t been balanced either.”

“All your worryin’ is makin’ you sound like my mom again, Akaashi-kun,” Miya remarks before noticing a young family behind Keiji. He hands Keiji a pair of disposable chopsticks and nods toward the side of the booth, excusing himself.

Keiji steps aside with his eggplant pickles and watches Miya revert to his business facade before his customers. It slips a little, when Miya bends nearly in half to bring himself level with the two children to listen to their timid orders; Keiji sees Miya smile at them, like a secret, his face too low for anyone but them to catch it. The children, perhaps twins, smile back before shyly retreating behind their mother’s legs.

Keiji turns his attention back to the pickles. They’re delicious, though Keiji decides he prefers his mother’s _nukazuke_ more.

“We’ll be closed tomorrow to prep for sellin’ at the game,” Miya says, folding his arms and leaning against the counter again after the family walks away. He lowers his voice, jokingly furtive, and adds, “But if you drop by before, say, 2 pm, I might be willin’ to spare a few onigiri for a loyal customer.”

Keiji finishes chewing the last of the eggplant and lowers his own voice to match. “Please allow me to pay for it while I’m actually in town.”

Miya frowns for a moment. He leans back to his full height, clearing his voice back to normal volume, and says, “When I’m offered free food, Akaashi-kun, I accept without question.”

The lights blink, and the welcome announcement booms over the P.A. system. Miya digs under his counter for his card holder, pulls out a business card, and hands it to Keiji. “You remember where to find us, right?”

Bokuto surely knows, and Keiji can easily look up directions on his phone—but he appreciates the civility of the little rectangle of cardstock, and offers out his own once he tucks Miya’s into his case.

Miya huffs out a laugh as he examines Keiji’s Weekly Shonen Vie information. “What am I s’pposed to do with this?”

“I’m not sure, force of habit,” Keiji admits, though he can guess why: Miya has given him dozens of onigiri, delivered bags of rice, fed Bokuto and Hinata at his request, and now offered to open his shop for him; all Keiji has given in return is money and a superfluous business card.

The imbalance makes Keiji uneasy—not quite the tip of the ball in their tenser jousts, but similar.

“I have to find my seat now,” Keiji says, excusing himself. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miya-kun.”

Miya waves with Keiji’s business card tucked between his middle and ring fingers.

※ ※ ※

**[December 15, 2018]**

**OnigiriMiya** **  
**[20:59] Oi

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:01] What

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:01] Are Bokuto and Akaashi dating

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:02] Are you trying to start a scandal or something  
[21:02] Can you do it about someone who isn’t on my team

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:02] I’m just trying to figure out what their deal is  
[21:03] I thought had a girlfriend  
[21:03] Then I thought he was single  
[21:03] Then he said he was staying at Bokuto’s tonight

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:04] Samu  
[21:04] Why are you messing around with Keiji-kun  
[21:04] Do you want Bokkun to deck you???

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[21:05] I’m not messing around with him  
[21:05] He’s a customer  
[21:06] I just don’t want to put my foot in my mouth like you always do

 **tsumu_miya**  
[21:06] Shut up

 **OnigiriMiya**  
[21:06] And do you really think Bokuto’s ever thrown a real punch in his entire life

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:07] Maybe like in self defense or something idk  
[21:07] Shouyou-kun’s here let me just ask him about Bokkun and Keiji-kun

[21:10] He said they’re life partners??

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:11] ?  
[21:11] Is that  
[21:11] A yes on the dating

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:12] I don’t fucking know, hold on

[21:16] He said it’s kinda like him and Tobio-kun

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:17] Guess that means they’re dating **  
**[21:17] Btw my condolences to you about Hinata  
[21:17] And my condolences to Sakusa  
[21:18] And to like half the V League

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:18] SHUT UP  
[21:19] AND NO  
[21:19] Shouyou-kun says he doesn’t think it’s romantic

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:20] Between him and Kageyama or between Akaashi and Bokuto?

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[21:21] SHUT  
[21:21] UP  
[21:21] !!!!!

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:22] This is the least helpful talk we’ve ever had  
[21:22] And that’s really saying something

※ ※ ※

Bokuto leads Keiji away from Osaka City’s business district to a quieter neighborhood of two-story wood-and-stone buildings, navigating the narrow streets in a trail of cheerful white puffs of breath. He ducks under the Onigiri Miya shop curtain, rattling the sliding door as he cups his hands against the window to peek inside.

“Myaa-Sam?” Bokuto calls out into the dark interior.

After a few moments Keiji hears a click, and Osamu Miya appears at the threshold, sweatshirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and an apron tied around his waist.

Miya pushes off his cap to scratch at his dark hair as he looks between Bokuto and Keiji. “Bokkun?”

 _I haven’t seen Osamu Miya without a hat since high school,_ Keiji considers.

“Myaa-Sam!” Bokuto exclaims with delight as he catches Keiji’s sleeve with one hand and grasps Miya’s hand with the other. “I brought Akaashi!”

“I can see that,” Miya replies, his smile at Bokuto sincere and easy. “You should’ve told me you’d be joinin’ Akaashi-kun, I would’ve saved some _sukiyaki_ onigiri for you.”

“I like chicken too!” Bokuto chirps as he follows Miya into the empty shop, pulling Keiji along with him. Keiji’s glasses fog over as he exits the cold, and as he clears them, he recognizes the wood-paneled walls from his university visits to Osaka, and the clean, old sales counter of the same grain. Even with the more commercial concessions—the stainless steel refrigerators, the glass display cases humming in the corners—Keiji is surprised to find that the empty shop feels almost like a well-lived-in home.

“It smells good in here,” Keiji remarks as he and Bokuto peel off their winter coats. Miya glances over his shoulder at Keiji as he fits his cap back on, and nods toward the kitchen.

“A new batch of rice just finished cookin’, and I’m addin’ shrimp _tempura_ rice balls to today’s concessions,” Miya says as he washes his hands.

Bokuto settles at a counter seat with an easy familiarity that speaks to how often he’s visited this shop, and drums his hands on the surface. “Ooh, that sounds good, can you make me and Akaashi some of those?”

“Bokuto-san, if it’s a limited item, Miya-kun should save it for his customers,” Keiji admonishes, unwavering even as Bokuto aims a pout at him. “He already opened his shop for us, let’s not trouble him further.”

“But Myaa-Sam likes feeding people!” Bokuto protests earnestly, and his stomach rumbles to argue his point.

Keiji refuses to budge. He does not want the nebulous imbalance in his relationship with Miya to tilt any further. “We should be considerate. What would his staff think?”

“They all just stepped out for lunch, and I won’t tell if you don’t,” Miya cuts in, winking at Bokuto as he walks through the dividing curtain into the back kitchen. He emerges a few moments later with a tray stacked with supplies, and Bokuto hums victoriously when he spots fried shrimp among the ingredients.

Keiji sighs as Miya sets the tray of _tempura_ onto the counter. “You don’t have to indulge him, Miya-kun.”

“Nah, it’s one of my great pleasures in life to watch Bokkun eat my food,” Miya reassures him as he wets his hands and rubs salt into his palms. “I wish I could hire him to promote Onigiri Miya—even Tsumu doesn’t make my onigiri look as tasty.”

Bokuto revels smugly in the praise, and Keiji can’t contain his own fond chuckle at Bokuto’s satisfaction.

So Keiji peers through the glass counter partition, and watches: Miya gathers the perfect measure of gleaming rice into his left hand, and forms a divot with the index and middle fingers of his right; dips the golden tempura into the sauce by the tail, drains it against the glass bowl’s lip, and rests it in the well of rice; enfolds it all between the well-practiced bend of his broad palms, thumb and pinky raised away so the width of the onigiri is just right; presses, and rolls, and presses.

He folds the seaweed over like a robe and centers the bright flare of the shrimp’s tail in the gap. With Miya’s face angled downward, Keiji can only see the flit of his dark eyelashes as he methodically completes the second onigiri, then the third.

When he watches Atsumu Miya, Keiji is certain that his hands are meant for volleyball. When he watches Osamu Miya, Keiji is certain that his hands are meant for this.

After he finishes the third, Miya wipes his fingers on a dishcloth, then uses a long pair of chopsticks to angle the bias-sliced cucumber at the corner of the plate. Keiji watches as he studies the plating, carefully wiping off stray grains of salt or drops of water, before judging it ready to present.

“I feel like I should take a photo,” Keiji remarks as Miya delivers the finished platter over the counter.

Miya turns his head and smiles, not as freely as he does for Bokuto, but true. “You’re makin’ me blush, Akaashi-kun.”

“You should send the pic to Yukippe,” Bokuto suggests, and snatches an onigiri as soon as Keiji snaps a photo. A few seconds later, Keiji’s phone buzzes.

“She wrote back ‘I’ll kill you’,” Keiji reads.

Bokuto guffaws so hard that rice flies out of his mouth.

Keiji tucks his phone back into his jeans pocket then lifts the second onigiri from the plate, murmuring _itadakimasu_ before he partakes. He savors the way the roasted _nori_ yields to his bite, to Kita’s tender, magnificent rice. The dipped shrimp is bold and juicy, the cucumber cold and fresh—and before long, the onigiri is gone. Keiji bites the last grain of rice from the back of his thumb.

His own amateurish onigiri are satisfying—but a fresh one, from Onigiri Miya, is _perfect._

“Thank you for the meal,” Keiji says, turning his eyes up and finding, a bit taken aback, that Miya has been watching him eat. Miya nods at Keiji, mouth full with the third onigiri, and quickly returns his attention to his own rice ball.

”Delicious!” Bokuto declares, stretching his arms over the counter like a pleased cat. “Myaa-sam, you should add that to the main menu!”

”I appreciate your enthusiasm, but they’re kinda finicky to make,” Miya replies, studying the rest of the ingredients before him with a judicious eye. He takes a moment to catch Bokuto’s eye and wink once more, much to Bokuto’s joy. “But I’ll take it into consideration if you really want it, Bokkun.”

”I do! And Akaashi wants it too, don’t you?” Bokuto gushes, turning his attention to Keiji. Miya shifts to face Keiji as well, expectant.

”Neither of us are in the position to be making demands to Miya-kun’s business, Bokuto-san,” Keiji prefaces, and Bokuto wilts a bit. “But yes, I did find it delicious. Because they’re _tempura_ and they’re smaller than the other onigiri, I expect they would be popular with children, Miya-kun.”

Miya hums, neutral, and repeats, “That’s true, I’ll take it into consideration.”

Bokuto’s phone suddenly dings from his coat pocket, the chime loud in the near-empty room. Bokuto droops, progressively gloomier, as he scrolls through the messages. He sulkily turns the screen to Keiji. “Akaashi, Captain says I have to head back for the team meeting.”

“Already?” Keiji asks, disappointed, leaning in to read Meian’s texts. “I thought we would have until my train leaves.”

“Well, the DESEO Hornets’ setter is a tough match-up for Tsumu and Sakusa, so I bet y’all have some extra plannin’ to do this time,” Miya remarks as Bokuto reluctantly dons his winter coat. Keiji begins to collect his belongings as well, relieved that the short meeting had remained cordial in front of Bokuto, when Bokuto holds out a hand.

“No, it’s alright, Akaashi,” Bokuto says, dejected but noble. “You can keep hanging out with Myaa-Sam.”

 _We’re not friends, though,_ Keiji wants to protest, his coat already pulled over one arm in his haste to leave with him—but the train back to Tokyo is not for another two hours, and Keiji doubts that he would be welcome to wait in the Black Jackals strategy room. He hesitantly slips his coat back off and returns it to his lap.

“Cheer up, Bokkun,” Miya soothes, walking to a shelf filled with stock. He rummages through the wrapped onigiri, tosses a few into a paper bag, and offers it over the counter. “Here, take these, they’re made of multigrain rice—a little healthier for you.”

Bokuto accepts, holding the bag to his chest, and sincerely says, “I love you, Myaa-Sam.”

Miya snorts fondly. Bokuto grabs one of Keiji’s shoulders and squeezes it, adding, “Make sure Akaashi doesn’t miss his train!”

“Good luck with the game,” Miya calls after him as Bokuto waves from the doorway, sliding the door shut in a flurry of cold December air.

Keiji feels a bit of the levity in the shop leave with him. After a silent moment staring at the door, Keiji turns back to Miya. “If I’m in the way, I can wait at one of the cafes in the area.”

“Nah, I thought _I_ was in the way,” Miya replies, filling two cups from a kettle. He places the green tea in front of Keiji along with one of the multigrain onigiri he had given to Bokuto, then takes a sip from the second cup. “It’s just me here for the next hour. If you’re not stickin’ around for the game tonight, you should’ve spent all mornin’ with Bokuto.”

“Well, Bokuto-san likes you, and he’ll return to Tokyo for New Years soon enough,” Keiji says as he warms his hand around the teacup. He notices a tea stem floating upright. “Though I admit, I’m envious that you get to see him so often.”

Miya turns to the stainless steel sink, and over the sound of the rushing water says, “On my end, I wish I saw _less_ of Tsumu.”

 _Oh,_ Keiji thinks, looking up at Miya’s back. _Atsumu-san._

On the list of Osamu Miya’s weak points, he had been least prepared for Miya to bring up his brother. Keiji carefully maneuvers through the unfamiliar terrain, stepping as softly as possible. “I’m sure you see Atsumu-san less than you did in high school, at least.”

“True, though he still ends up here all the time when he feels like throwin’ a tantrum.” Miya shakes his wet hands, and droplets hit the sides of the sink in a dozen little _dings_. He returns to the counter, wiping his hands on a dishcloth, and proceeds to deftly shape _tenmusu_. “I’d be lyin’ if I said it didn’t intimidate the hell outta me when we went our separate ways after high school, but it was the right choice. I mean, we’d already started makin’ moves toward separating ourselves, even before I left volleyball.”

“Like what?”

“Hair color, I s’ppose.“ His face is tilted downward toward his work again, making it difficult for Keiji to see any of the telltale shifts in his placid expression; his voice, ever even, steadfastly reveals nothing. “We used to get mixed up all the time in middle school, but that pretty much stopped once we went gold and silver—or, actually, nasty yellow and gray.”

Keiji smoothes his chuckle into an introspective hum, doing his best to read what little he can see in Miya’s face. “But you two were ultimately doing the same thing by both coloring your hair, though. I think the greater move toward independence was no longer dyeing it at all.”

Miya looks up from his work and catches Keiji studying his face, the tea and onigiri untouched in Keiji’s focused efforts to read him. Keiji, though startled, refuses to break the gaze first.

“It’s creepy how far you go into analyzin’ stuff like hair,” Miya says instead, with enough amusement in his voice that it does not ring as an accusation. He looks away first, back to the familiarity of his hands on rice. “I quit dyein’ it because I was tired of killin’ my hair with chemicals, and I needed the bank to take me seriously to get a business loan. Though I guess as a manga editor, you’re used to readin’ symbolism into those kinda things.”

“Did you start wearing the hat to hide your roots growing in?” Keiji asks, unwrapping the onigiri, and Miya lets out a quiet huff of laughter.

“No, the hat’s a hair cover for health and safety, Akaashi-kun,” Miya replies, folding over a sheet of seaweed. He lines up the completed _tenmusu_ on a tray. “Listen, I love Tsumu, but I don’t particularly like him, at least not all the time. I don’t think that’s the same case as you and Bokuto.”

“That’s true, I like Bokuto-san quite a lot.” Keiji bites into the multigrain onigiri; while his mouth is occupied, Keiji takes the opportunity to debate how much honesty to offer in return. Like Keiji, Miya seems like a person who is sparing with his vulnerability. It feels wrong, both strategically and personally, not to reciprocate.

The tea stem floats upright in his teacup. _Good luck,_ Keiji thinks. He may as well go all in. He takes in a breath, and says, “But I do find it troubling that my closeness with Bokuto-san can take its toll on my relationships.”

On the surface of the tea, Miya’s reflection freezes, then resumes his rote movements. “Shirofuku-san?”

“No, not her, she understood,” Keiji replies. This is true: Shirofuku had only asked Keiji to date her out of comfort and nostalgia, the most familiar figure in a lonely, unfamiliar place. Both of them had been missing other people, and they had found the next-best thing in each other. “But it’s been a strain on my subsequent relationships, when my partners hadn’t known Bokuto-san first.”

Miya makes a hum of acknowledgement.

Keiji thinks of his handful of relationships after Shirofuku, only two of which had extended long enough for them to realize that Keiji already had Bokuto: and though they had each wanted Keiji, and Keiji had wanted them in return, the scale would never compare.

 _I think you two are soulmates,_ one of them—a kind food science major, Shirofuku’s classmate—had said as he and Keiji gently negotiated their separation. _I hope I can find someone who’ll know me like he knows you._

Keiji had not known how to explain that he was not looking for someone to know him like a soulmate, or to compare to Bokuto at all: Keiji had just wanted someone who liked him back.

 _I hope you can too,_ Keiji had replied.

“At sixteen, it felt exciting to form such a close connection with another person—but now, in my twenties, I’m not sure what else I’m meant to look for,” Keiji says to the tea stem in his cup. He takes a sip and swallows it, the warmth traveling down his throat into his chest. “I understand that the closest bond a person forms in their life isn’t always romantic, but that seems like a nasty thing to explain to someone who wants it to be.”

“Hmm, well, try bein’ a twin,” Miya replies after a moment. Keiji looks up from Miya’s reflection in the tea to Miya himself. His gaze is still cast down as he wipes his hands on a dishcloth, but his voice is careful: commiserative, but not pitying. “Welcome, I’ve been in this boat since birth.”

“Oh. My sympathies.”

“For havin’ Tsumu as my closest bond? Yeah, I appreciate it, it’s a real struggle,” Miya says, and Keiji allows himself to chuckle this time.

 _It’s unpleasant to be seen, but at least this time, it was because we let ourselves be,_ Keiji thinks as he watches Miya forage through the trays of onigiri behind him. _At least it was on our terms._

There is still a vague imbalance between them, but for the first time in weeks, it does not feel like he and Miya are laying plots against each other on opposing sides of a divide. Miya reaches over the counter and places two salted _kombu_ onigiri next to Keiji’s teacup.

“So,” Miya says as he clears his throat, eyes flicking up toward Keiji’s face, smile slight but nevertheless more substantial than a millimeter and millisecond. “Who do you think is gonna win tonight?”

Keiji thinks it over as he unwraps one of the onigiri, and replies, “As an ex-setter myself, I prefer Iizuna-san’s style, but I think the Black Jackals have the home team advantage.”

※ ※ ※

When Miya’s employees begin to return from their breaks, Keiji discreetly slides several thousand yen under his plate and excuses himself to leave.

“Thank you for opening your shop for me and Bokuto-san,” Keiji says as he pulls on his coat. “It’s been a while since I’ve been able to discuss volleyball with anyone other than Udai-sensei or Shirofuku-san. It was fun.”

“Same to you,” Miya replies, then nods at the heavy paper bag of onigiri that Keiji is struggling to zip into his backpack. It’s Keiji’s normal order—one of each onigiri filling, with a side of the day’s pickles—but doubled, at Miya’s insistence, when Keiji had mentioned that he might see Shirofuku that evening. “Hope that’ll hold you and Shirofuku-san over ‘til next time. Kita-san’ll send the next bag of rice in early January.”

“Thank you for that as well, I look forward to it,” Keiji says with probably a little too much enthusiasm. His backpack finally closes around the onigiri with a few more sturdy yanks. He takes his cue from the growing noise in the kitchen, and stands to leave.

Eyes level, Miya surveys Keiji for a moment, arms crossed, tapping the toe of his shoe idly behind him; apparently deciding, Miya says, “Wait for me for a bit, Akaashi-kun.”

He disappears into the bustle of the kitchen, uttering the occasional greeting or instruction to his staff until he’s out of earshot. After a minute or so, he returns with an unmarked cardboard box.

“Take this, and use it when you cook Kita-san’s rice,” Miya says, opening the lid to show Keiji the box’s contents. “Unless you already have one?”

Keiji leans forward to look inside: a clay pot, masterfully crafted and glazed shining black. It’s a pleasant size, just right to comfortably hold two or three servings, and the lid clatters a bit as Miya tilts it forward.

“I don’t own a _donabe_ , but I can’t take yours, Miya-kun,” Keiji says, surprised. The longer he looks, the more he notices: the cardboard box is soft at the corners, and there’s the littlest chip on one of the handles. He thinks he can see a certificate of authenticity tucked under the pot. It is old, and well-seasoned, and likely worth several tens of thousands of yen. “A clay pot this nice must be expensive.”

Miya closes the box and offers it over the counter. “Listen, Kita-san’s rice deserves the best. Nothin’ compares to rice cooked in a clay pot.”

“You’ve already given me too much—”

“I’m just lendin’ it to you, bring it back when you’re done,” Miya interrupts. He taps his fingers against the cardboard coaxingly. “C’mon, I promise it’ll make Kita-san’s rice taste _really_ good.”

Though sated with the steady stream of onigiri that Miya has provided over the afternoon, Keiji can’t help but grow a bit hungry at the thought.

 _Atsumu-san, and rice, and his old captain from Inarizaki,_ Keiji reminds himself. _Those are Osamu Miya’s delicate points._

Keiji takes hold of the box with both hands. “Will it make the rice taste more like Onigiri Miya?”

Miya raises his eyebrows a fraction. “I mean, I’ve used this _donabe_ , so it’s seasoned with my cookin’ and all,” Miya says after a moment of thought. “But we use electric rice cookers for the onigiri we sell, so probably not.”

Keiji cradles the box in his arms, wary of the delicate ceramic inside, and sighs. “Miya-kun, it’d be so much more convenient for me if you just opened an Onigiri Miya branch in Tokyo.”

A laugh, only half-restrained. Miya folds his arms again and squints. “You’re all polite one minute, then you suddenly hit me with the most wildly selfish requests—you’re pretty funny, Akaashi-kun.”

“I’ve been called ‘strange’ before, ‘funny’ is new,” Keiji replies. He bows, careful not to jostle the _donabe_ even as weight of his onigiri-filled backpack pitches him forward. “Please enjoy Bokuto-san’s game on my behalf tonight, Miya-kun.”

“Have a safe trip home,” Miya calls after him, and disappears behind the sliding door and the red Onigiri Miya curtain.

※ ※ ※

**[December 17, 2018]**

**tsumu_miya** **  
**[17:03] Samu **  
**[17:03] The boys and I are heading over now **  
**[17:03] Start a couple of tuna and spring onion onigiri for me

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[17:07] Don’t use my onigiri as your coping mechanism **  
**[17:07] Sorry about the DESEO Hornets game btw

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[17:08] WOW HOW BOUT YOU SHUT UP ABOUT THE GAME

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[17:09] Akaashi said he thought you’d win  
[17:09] If that makes you feel better

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[17:10] WELL WE LOST SO NOT REALLY  
[17:10] Also WHY are you still messing with Keiji-kun  
[17:10] Bokkun might actually be pretty scary if you’re mean to him  
[17:11] Like even a little bit mean

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[17:12] I think he’s got himself covered **  
**[17:12] Akaashi can get pretty brutal when Bokuto’s not around  
[17:12] And he’s kind of a bastard  
[17:13] Like he’s funny

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[17:14] What are you talking about  
[17:14] Bastard? Funny??  
[17:14] Keiji-kun???

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[17:15] Yesterday he said straight to my face that he likes Iizuna better than you  
[17:15] That’s pretty hilarious right ha ha  
[17:15] I mean I also like Iizuna better

 **tsumu_miya** **  
**[17:16] FUCK OFF  
[17:16] GO MAKE MY ONIGIRI YOU SHITBIRD

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[17:17] Love u too Tsumu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I don’t know how long this fic is going to be or if I’ll make an update schedule, but there’s a work project I keep putting off because I want to write this instead, and I think I need to get to work on that ha ha :’D  
> \- I’m sorry about how obvious it is that I am more h-word for food than I am for either Osamu or Akaashi… I tried to focus on Osamu’s hands but I got distracted by the rice and shrimp tempura  
> \- I’m also sorry that my Webtoon feelings really jumped out at the start, I can’t stop talking about smell and memory  
> \- I laugh every time the hosts say “shitbird” in the podcast “Hey Riddle Riddle”, I can’t believe I finally had the opportunity to use it  
> 


	3. Mochigome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _donabe_ bleeds the last of its heat into Keiji’s palm. Constellations of minute cracks fracture the glaze, like the branching veins on the backs of hands; Keiji can tell by the color that’s seeped into them how often this _donabe_ must have been used before it found itself in his care. “I don’t think Osamu Miya and I are quite friends, Bokuto-san.”
> 
> “You are,” Bokuto counters instantly, almost surprised.
> 
> (Content warnings: Mentions of alcohol, implied vomiting, minor injuries [mild burns, getting a finger smashed, etc.])

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Mochigome_ : Sweet glutinous rice, used to make _mochi_.  
> 

**[December 17, 2018]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[21:01] Hello Miya-kun, I’m sorry to disturb your evening. Thank you again for the donabe. However, I realized that I don’t know how to properly care for it, so I’d like to ask for advice. The internet is giving me conflicting answers.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:11] Hey  
[21:11] It’s fine it’s just Tsumu and his buds here  
[21:11] Bokuto’s here too

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:12] Oh! Please tell him I say hello

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:12] Sure thing  
[21:12] Donabes aren’t that hard to cook with but  
[21:13] Actually you know what  
[21:13] Are you gonna use it tonight?

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:13] No, I was just planning to wash it

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:14] Ok  
[21:14] I’ll get back to you, I’ll have Tsumu help me

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:14] ?

**OnigiriMiya** **  
**[22:44] Hmm this mightve been a mistake but  
[22:44] <Video attachment: _22.24_ \- _17-dec-2018.mov > _

**k_akaashi** **  
**[22:56] Aha

※ ※ ※

In Setagaya, Keiji learns how to make _donabe_ rice.

It is, objectively, a bad video.

Keiji watches it three times.

Then he sends it to his mother, because she loves Bokuto, and there’s quite a lot of Bokuto in the video considering he has no information to contribute.

Then, the following evening, Keiji gingerly places the black _donabe_ next to his container of Proper Hyogo rice, and follows what little he can hear of Miya’s instructions through the commotion.

“So when you’re usin’ a _donabe_ —” is all Miya gets out before his brother, filming from his seat at the counter, cuts him off with, “Who’re you makin’ this for? YouTube? A girl? Take your hat off, Samu, it makes you look stupid.”

Miya removes his Onigiri Miya cap, and Bokuto puts it on.

Miya resumes, “Wash the _donabe_ with a soft sponge, dry it upside-down, and make sure it’s completely dry before—”

“Ohh, Akaashi said you gave him a clay pot!” Bokuto interrupts, taking off the cap and fitting it onto Hinata’s head. “Are you making the video for Akaashi?”

Atsumu swivels the camera to center Bokuto and Hinata, and Hinata grins, brightening the room by a few watts.

“Hello, Akaashi-san!” Hinata calls out as the cap brim droops over his eyes.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto agrees.

“Sharing headwear spreads lice,” Sakusa grumbles from out-of-frame.

Miya, now at the periphery of the screen, holds a dove gray _donabe_ above the counter. “If it’s still wet when you start heatin’ it over the stove, it might crack. I seasoned yours already—”

“Tsum-Tsum, did you know he sent Akaashi rice from Hyogo?”

“Kita-san’s rice?”

Atsumu swerves back to his brother; Miya ignores him, electing instead to sift through a colander of drained rice with his fingers. “Wash your rice like normal, then put it—”

“You’re sendin’ him _Kita-san’s_ rice?” Atsumu repeats.

“The ratio of rice to water is about nine to ten. In the _donabe_ I gave you, I usually cook 540 milliliters of rice in 600 milliliters of water. Let it soak for twenty minutes.”

“Wait a— _twenty minutes_? Tell me you’ve got another pot of rice already cookin’!”

Miya looks up from his _donabe_ , meeting eyes with Atsumu behind the camera for the first time, and beckons him with a sweep of his chin. “C’mere.”

Atsumu sullenly follows past the dividing curtain and into the kitchen, taking no particular care to hold the camera steady. The shot stabilizes as Miya places the _donabe_ on the stove with a telling sort of gentleness; then Miya turns, crossing his arms and leaning his hip against the stainless steel counter, and fixes Atsumu with a smile so immediate and reckless that it startles Keiji every time he watches the video.

“You said you’d film ‘til the rice was done,” Miya drawls with the specific sibling-glee that comes from being an inconvenience, “So you’re gonna sit pretty for an _hour,_ Tsumu.”

“I didn’t agree to a fuckin’ _hour_ —!” Atsumu shouts over his brother’s laughter before the video jolts and abruptly cuts.

Keiji rinses his own rice while he watches the next few sequences: Hinata juggling a volleyball with his feet on a streetlit stretch of sidewalk in front of Onigiri Miya; Sakusa, alone at a corner table with a cup of tea, swatting the camera away with a paperback; Bokuto excitedly describing Inunaki’s emergency sets from their last practice match, straight to the camera—straight to Keiji, it almost seems—with a smile so brilliant that Keiji finds himself mirroring it back to his phone.

In a quieter, stiller moment: the gray _donabe_ on the stove, white steam streaming out from the vents in the lid.

“After ‘bout fifteen minutes on medium-high, it’ll look like this,” Miya says, voice nearer than before from behind the camera. A hand reaches to the burner and shuts it off. “When the steam’s been goin’ for a couple of minutes, turn off the heat, and let it sit for twenty more.”

Miya lingers on the _donabe_ and the line of rice bags against the wall, each stamped with the word “proper”. An identical Kita Farm rice bag sits on Keiji’s kitchen shelf, half emptied.

Sakusa’s voice calls from the shop front, “Miya, more tea and _umeboshi_.”

Keiji pauses the video to catch up. His own hands are quite nimble after years of manipulating volleyballs into flight, then years more of penciling annotations into the narrow margins of manuscripts—but they seem clumsy compared to Miya’s ease, even in actions as simple as shaking water from his colander, or placing the _donabe_ down on the stovetop. The clay bottom of the _donabe_ makes contact with the stove grate with a scrape that makes Keiji wince.

It’s Miya’s hands, not Keiji’s, that are meant for this.

The lid of the _donabe_ aligns with the pleasant clink of ceramic on ceramic, and Keiji sets a timer before resuming the video.

Hinata is filming now, because Bokuto and Atsumu are crowding Miya around the _donabe_ and Keiji doubts that Sakusa would deign to participate. Miya lifts the lid with a dishcloth, and places it carefully aside; half-obscured by the rising steam, he leans forward to fluff the rice with a paddle.

 _Heaven,_ Miya’s expression says.

“The rice should look—”

A yelp and a clatter—Bokuto clutches his hand to his chest, eyes wide with betrayal as the _donabe_ lid in front of him wobbles and tips over.

Atsumu clicks his tongue in admonishment. Miya pulls his apron over his hand to catch the lid rolling across the counter.

“Now Bokkun, you knew it was hot, why would you touch the— _shit!_ ” Atsumu swears as his own pinky grazes the _donabe_ itself and his entire arm flies up, smacking hard into his brother’s throat.

Both Keiji and Hinata watch helplessly as chaos erupts behind the counter, the camera bouncing between the three men nursing their near-simultaneous injuries. Miya, coughing, finally drags Bokuto and Atsumu to the sink by the wrists and runs the tap cold over their singed fingers.

Hinata leans forward to film into the abandoned _donabe_ amidst the clamor of scoldings and complaints: plump, intact grains, lustrous through the steam.

“I think I’d better stop now,” Hinata says, turning the camera toward himself to smile apologetically. Keiji hears Sakusa sigh loudly from afar. “Send us a picture of how your _donabe_ rice goes, Akaashi-san! Goodbye!”

The video ends, and Keiji’s apartment drains back to the soft hum of his refrigerator and heating unit. He’s grown accustomed to the near-silence of solitary living—enjoys it, even—but after an evening filled with such familiar voices, Keiji finds that the quiet feels more like an absence tonight.

Soon, at least, there will be rice. And if that isn’t enough to sate him, perhaps he’ll ask Udai to lunch tomorrow after their morning meeting.

Keiji checks his timer, stretches out across his sofa, and begins the video again.

※ ※ ※

**[December 18, 2018]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[21:25] <Image attachment: _202101-2018Dec18.jpeg > _  
[21:25] My donabe rice.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:47] Hell yeah  
[21:47] That looks perfect

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:49] You were right, donabe rice does taste better than rice cooked in a rice cooker. More complex, maybe? I don’t completely understand the concept of “seasoning” a pot, but I can certainly taste the difference. The texture is different as well, in a very pleasant way. I wish I could prepare Kita-san’s rice this way every time.  
[21:49] If you have any other simple donabe recipes, I would appreciate it.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:50] Glad you enjoyed it  
[21:50] There’s plenty you can make in a donabe  
[21:50] I’ll find something for you

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[21:50] Thank you, Miya-kun **  
**[21:51] Also, my mother thinks you’re handsome. Atsumu-san too, but she prefers black hair.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[21:51] Aha she has good taste  
[21:52] Wait  
[21:52] Why’d you show the video to your mom

* * *

**[2018-12-20]**

**BOKUTO_ACE**  
[13:01] MYAA SAM (;Д;)  
[13:01] CAPTAIN SAID I TRIED TO WRESTLE YOU AT THE MID SEASON PARTY LAST NIGHT

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[13:14] Hey Bokkun  
[13:15] Yeah you got pretty drunk didn’t you

 **BOKUTO_ACE**  
[13:16] NOOOO  
[13:16] (;Д;) (;Д;) (;Д;)  
[13:16] IM SO SORRY  
[13:16] I DIDNT HURT YOU DID I

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[13:17] Ha ha I’m fine buddy  
[13:17] I used to tussle with Tsumu all the time so I’m used to it

 **BOKUTO_ACE**  
[13:17] DID  
[13:18] DID I WIN

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[13:18] The fight? **  
**[13:19] Don’t think either of us won **  
**[13:19] It was mostly an aggressive hug

 **BOKUTO_ACE**  
[13:20] AW MAN  
[13:20] I MEANT WHAT I SAID THOUGH  
[13:20] (I TALKED TO YOU RIGHT) (I HAD THINGS TO TALK ABOUT)

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[13:21] You did **  
**[13:21] And I know you meant it, buddy  
[13:21] We’re all good

 **BOKUTO_ACE**  
[13:22] OK  
[13:22] HAVE FUN IN HYOGO WITH TSUMTSUM

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[13:23] You too Bokkun  
[13:23] Have a nice break in Tokyo

* * *

In Setagaya, Keiji scoops the last of the chicken, scallion, and ginger rice out of his _donabe_ and onto his plate.

“Dinner was really good, Akaashi!” Bokuto remarks cheerfully, and in the same breath, “I’m joining the EJP Raijin next season.”

Keiji looks up from the final spoonful of his meal, to Bokuto planking merrily on the opposite side of Keiji’s _kotatsu_. He blinks. The rebroadcast of the Red and White Song Festival on the television behind Bokuto suddenly seems a bit too loud.

Keiji tries to construct a meaningful response through the last warbling strains of an enka number but only manages, “It’ll be the first time since middle school that you won’t have a black and gold jersey, I think.”

Bokuto rotates to a side bridge to face Keiji and resets the timer on his phone. “Oh, that’s true! Even the National Team has those colors along with the red, huh? Do you think I’ll look okay in white and blue?”

“I’m sure you will, Bokuto-san,” Keiji replies, distracted.

 _EJP Raijin. That’s the same team as Washio-san. What will happen to our yearly get-together with the rest of Fukurodani?_ The enka song finally ends, but now the applause and the announcer skits shoot scattershot through Keiji’s thoughts. _No, it doesn’t have to be only once a year anymore. Will Onaga-kun still be in the Tamaden Elephants next season? I should message Shirofuku-san._

Bokuto hums, content, before his eyes widen again. “It’s only a one season contract, though! I’ll be back to the Jackals by 2020, don’t become too much of an EJP fan!”

“I’m afraid it’s too late, because of Washio-san I already support the EJP as much as the Black Jackals,” Keiji says, and finally raises the last bite of ginger chicken to his mouth. Bokuto gasps with all the drama of a jilted lover.

A map of the prefectures unfolds in Keiji’s mind, dotted with V.League team bases, tied together with railway lines; he listens to the opening chords of the Red Team’s song and thinks, _Bokuto-san will no longer be on the other side of Japan._ _The EJP are based in Shizuoka. That’s only an hour from here by train._

“So we’ll be able to meet up more often!” Bokuto remarks, comfortably converging with Keiji’s thoughts as he often does. “I can just take the train to Tokyo, or you could come visit to see Mount Fuji!”

“That does sound nice,” Keiji says, genuinely. He turns his eyes to the last grains of rice stuck to the cream-colored interior of his _donabe_ before remembering, abruptly, that the _donabe_ is not _his_. “Ah, if that’s the case, perhaps you should take Miya-kun’s _donabe_ back with you to Osaka this weekend.”

The spiky ends of Bokuto’s hair rise first from the other end of the _kotatsu_ , then his bewildered face _._ “Huh? Why?”

“You won’t be on Atsumu-san’s team next season.” Keiji pulls the _donabe_ toward himself to prevent it from being knocked over in Bokuto’s scramble to right himself. “I’ll rarely see Miya-kun from now on, so I should return it while I have the chance.”

“Why?”

“I don’t understand what you mean by ‘why’, Bokuto-san.”

“Did you and Myaa-Sam fight?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Bokuto hauls himself up so he can cross his arms on the tabletop, post-meal exercises forgotten. “Then why won’t you see him anymore? You talk to me all the time, and to Yukippe, and to all the rest of your friends, even though lots of us are far away too.”

The _donabe_ bleeds the last of its heat into Keiji’s palm. Constellations of minute cracks fracture the glaze, like the branching veins on the backs of hands; Keiji can tell by the color that’s seeped into them how often this _donabe_ must have been used before it found itself in his care. “I don’t think Osamu Miya and I are quite friends, Bokuto-san.”

“You are,” Bokuto counters instantly, almost surprised. He fixes Keiji with his bright gold stare; Keiji feels pinned, seen, nearly like that suffocating moment in Sendai when he had been caught between the jumbotron and Miya—but with Bokuto, acknowledgement feels too familiar to be anything dangerous.

Bokuto sees Keiji, and Keiji breathes.

“Akaashi, he sent you rice all the way from Hyogo,” Bokuto says, in the simple and firm way in which he speaks all truths. “And he opened Onigiri Miya for us that time you visited. And he gave you his _donabe_ —and he made you that video to teach you how to use it!”

The tenuous unbalance between Keiji and Miya, dulled by five hundred kilometers and the buffer of phone screens, settles sharply in Keiji’s stomach once more. 

He sets the lid back on the _donabe_ and holds it down with his palm, pressing his lips together in thought. “Just because he gives me things doesn’t mean he considers me a friend. We’re probably caught in a loop of courtesy. I’m his customer, after all.”

“You always overthink stuff like this, Akaashi, isn’t friendship just that sort of give-and-take until you both stop keeping count?” Bokuto groans, frustrated. He squints at Keiji’s mild expression, and haltingly explains, “I’m not just talking about the _things_ he gives you _,_ it’s like… okay, Tsum-Tsum loves volleyball more than anything. And Myaa-Sam loves volleyball too, only a little bit less than Tsum-Tsum does. But Myaa-Sam likes food _even more_ than volleyball! Somehow!”

“Somehow,” Keiji echoes dutifully.

For all Keiji’s faith in his own ability to read people, he’s found over the years that Bokuto can be even more acute in these sorts of matters, though his reasoning can be difficult to follow. Bokuto is a being made of enthusiasm and warmth, after all, speaks it fluently while Keiji falters: where Keiji registers weaknesses, Bokuto instantly grasps loves, even in people as inscrutable to Keiji as Osamu Miya.

“Aha, it’s the _eating_! Myaa-Sam’s favorite thing in the world is _eating_ good food!” Bokuto snaps his fingers and points them at Keiji. “And he does stuff to make sure _you’re_ eating good food too, over and over and over! If he keeps feeding you even when you’re not being a customer at his shop, even when you’re far away, that means you’re his friend, right?”

Keiji blinks, considering, as he piles Bokuto’s dishes onto his own and carries them to the kitchen, the precious cargo of empty _donabe_ carefully enfolded in his other arm. He gingerly unloads his haul into the sink. “You like Miya-kun a lot, don’t you?”

The smile that blooms on Bokuto’s face is so wide that the bridge of his nose scrunches. “Yeah! Of course I like someone who keeps sharing his very favorite thing in the world with you. You deserve lots of people wanting to share their favorite things in the world with you, Akaashi.”

Keiji pauses over his sponge and dish soap, lets the warm water run over his hands and gurgle noisily down the drain. The back of his throat suddenly aches.

“Thank you, that’s a nice way of thinking about it, Bokuto-san,” Keiji says as he watches the _donabe_ crest and overflow. He gently works the sponge over the inside of the pot, rinses it clean, and places it upside-down on his drying rack with both hands. “Now I feel guilty. I haven’t done much to return his favors.”

“You thought about him when I said I was leaving the Black Jackals,” Bokuto replies without pause. “You’re taking really good care of his clay pot.”

Keiji wants to protest—wants to say, _Of course I’m careful with a twenty-thousand yen pot,_ or _I only thought about him because his_ donabe _was right in front of me_ , or _Those two acts are so insignificant, they can’t possibly be enough, how could they be?_ —but Keiji knows that equivocations rarely hold up against Bokuto.

Bokuto, a natural marksman for the heart of any matter, will say, _Those things don’t really matter, though, what does is: don’t you want to be his friend?_ —and Keiji will not have a ready answer, which will be answer enough for both of them.

“Well, I’ll have to think more on what you’ve said,” Keiji says with finality as he dries his hands on a dish towel. He returns to the _kotatsu_ and rolls a few tangerines across the tabletop to Bokuto.

“Which team do you think is winning?” Keiji asks, nodding toward the television.

Bokuto tosses a star-shaped peel to the center of the _kotatsu_ with a waft of citrus scent, then sets a tangerine segment into Keiji’s palm. “Hmm, I know the White Team’s gonna win, but I still like the Red Team better!”

※ ※ ※

**[January 02, 2019]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[22:12] Happy New Year, Miya-kun. I heard from Bokuto-san that he’s joining the EJP Raijin next season, so it seems that we’ll be at odds later this year (ha ha). Unfortunately, I suppose that also means that I’ll have to return your donabe soon. Please let me know what’s most convenient for you.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[22:13] Oh Akaashi-kun thank god  
[22:13] Happy new year  
[22:14] Could you do me a favor and call my phone right now  
[22:14] I need an excuse to get away from Tsumu

※ ※ ※

Keiji stares at the message, at the word “favor”, and appraises it against thousand yen notes and a business card and the act of washing a clay pot with the soft side of a sponge—but he decides that it’s not worth overthinking, and calls Miya for the first time since exchanging information in Matsumoto.

Miya picks up after four rings.

“—’ts real, you heard it ringin’, and if they’re callin’ late it’s probably private!” Miya shouts away from the receiver.

Distantly, Keiji hears Atsumu challenge, “Prove it, put ‘em on video call!”

“I can’t just _put ‘em on video call_ —”

“I _knew_ you were bluffin’—”

Keiji taps the camera icon on his screen. A few seconds later Miya pops up on Keiji’s phone, hatless and a little tousled; his cotton winter jacket, frayed at the collar seam, looks years-worn and exceptionally comfortable. Keiji imagines that he and Atsumu must be at their parents’ home for New Years.

The perplexed tilt of Miya’s eyebrows seems to ask, _You got a plan?,_ and Keiji shrugs.

Miya turns the phone toward the door. Atsumu, wearing an identical navy indoor coat over a pilly Vabo-chan sweatshirt, leans toward the screen from where he’s braced across the doorway with both arms and legs.

“Atsumu-san, I have an intensely personal matter to discuss with your brother,” Keiji lies without much conviction.

Atsumu’s face scrolls through a dozen complex shifts—Keiji notes with curiosity that though the Miya twins’ faces are identical, their expressions are not—before he finally settles on a glare aimed away from the screen.

“What the hell, Samu, that’s just Keiji-kun! Didn’t I _say_ —!” is the last Keiji hears of Atsumu before the door shuts loudly in his face.

“Is Atsumu-san alright?” Keiji asks as he watches Miya’s hand firmly lock the deadbolt.

“Oh he’s fine, he’s just in a mood ‘cause our folks are blamin’ him for ruinin’ the New Year’s _mochi,_ ” Miya replies, flipping the screen back toward himself and absently combing his hair off his forehead with his fingers. There’s a flash of white—tape around his pinky, Keiji thinks—before the camera shuts off. “Well, he _did_ ruin the New Year’s _mochi_.”

Keiji brings the phone back to his ear. “Ruin?”

“Smashed my hand with the hammer durin’ the _mochi_ poundin’, got blood everywhere, made all our li’l cousins cry.”

Keiji draws in a sympathetic breath through his teeth, and Miya chuckles.

“Every year, Tsumu says that I’ve gotta be the one turnin’ the _mochi,_ since he needs his hands to make a livin’ and can’t risk hurtin’ ‘em,” Miya sighs wearily. “Then he tries to bash mine in to prove that he’s the faster one—guess this was the year he finally caught up to me.”

Tucking an _umeboshi_ like a hidden treasure into a triangle of perfect rice, and shutting off stoves under clay pots, and returning warm change to customers’ palms—Keiji offers, “I would argue that you need your hands to make a living as well.”

Miya huffs out a laugh. “Well, it’s not that bad. I can still make onigiri with some of my fingernail missin’.”

“The poor _mochi_ rice, though.”

“Could’ja worry about my injuries first, Akaashi-kun?”

“I did, and now I’m worrying about the wasted rice.”

Miya laughs again, a low and soft rumble against Keiji’s ear. “Can’t you be sweet to me like you are to Bokkun?”

Keiji glances to the floor beside him where Bokuto lies snoring, the television throwing flashes of light and color over his sleeping form. He reaches over to straighten the hood of Bokuto’s sweatshirt from where it’s flopped over his face; Bokuto mumbles something in his sleep, but otherwise doesn’t stir.

“I’m not particularly lenient with Bokuto-san,” Keiji replies quietly as he withdraws his hand. “It’s more that I recognized long ago that I can’t control him, even if I wanted to.”

“I know how that feels, though I bet Tsumu and I went through a lot more kickin’ and punchin’ to reach that realization.” The creak of old floorboards, and then the springs of a bed. “Speakin’ of Bokuto. EJP Raijin, huh?”

“I’m interested to see how adding Bokuto-san to such a high defense team will play out.”

“That too, but volleyball analysis aside,” Miya says, “Shizuoka’s real close to Tokyo. Excited to have Bokuto so nearby again?”

Keiji hesitates from the obvious answer. He does not know how to reply without sounding greedy, or pathetic—does not want to confess, to Miya or to himself, how eager he is lest he jinx something—before remembering that this is Miya. He might understand Keiji’s trepidation most of all.

“I’m looking forward to it, though I was so surprised that I’ve barely processed it,” Keiji admits, shuffling onto his sofa to retrieve the remote control. He wishes he had Miya’s _hanten_ jacket as the _kotatsu_ ’s warmth dissipates from his limbs. “But it’s only for one season. After that, I’ll return him back to your care in Osaka.”

“Hey, before you start worryin’ about Bokuto movin’ back here, him and the whole National Team are gonna be in your backyard for training camps this summer,” Miya counters. “Then you’ll have ‘em again for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Have fun dealin’ with Tsumu for me for two summers in a row.”

Keiji pauses his channel surfing on a travel program about Nagano hot springs, restless hands falling still. He hadn’t known that Atsumu had joined the National Team roster this year. Atsumu Miya’s volleyball career is hazy in Keiji’s mind beyond its overlap with Bokuto’s, and Miya’s mild tone betrays as little as usual, but he registers that the upcoming summer might be the most extended separation between the Miyas since Osamu Miya left the sport.

 _Atsumu-san, and rice, and his old captain from Inarizaki,_ Keiji reminds himself, familiar with Miya’s weaknesses by now. He won’t avoid them, there’s nothing volatile about their conversation tonight, but he still wants to tread gently.

“I wish us both luck in our joint supervision of Bokuto-san and Atsumu-san over the next few years.”

“Cheers.” Another squeak of bedsprings, an exhale; Keiji can tell by the shift in the timbre of Miya’s voice that he’s lying back now. “And about the _donabe_ —the season’s not over ‘til April. Don’t worry about returnin’ it yet.”

Keiji pauses to trace the path of MSBY’s season in his head, a vaulting trail along the farthest coasts of Japan. “It may be a long time until we encounter each other again at a match. I could have Bokuto-san take your _donabe_ when he returns to Osaka this weekend.”

Miya hums contemplatively before replying, “I love Bokuto, but I think the _donabe_ has a better chance of stayin’ in one piece with you for a few months than it does with Bokkun for even one train ride. I mean, you’re so careful with it that you even asked me how to _wash_ it.”

 _You’re taking really good care of his clay pot_ , Bokuto’s voice repeats in Keiji’s mind.

“Then I will gratefully continue to use it.” The hot springs documentary ends; Keiji suddenly remembers the hour as a reel of late-night news headlines flashes across the screen. “I apologize again for contacting you so late. I’ll leave you to your evening.”

“No, no, keep talkin’ to me,”' Miya replies quickly, either rolling over or sitting up with the sudden hitch in his breathing. “If I keep Tsumu locked out of our room long enough, he might give up and go to bed on the livin’ room couch.”

“You share a bedroom with Atsumu-san?”

“At our parents’ house, yeah. Bunk beds since we were kids.”

Keiji tries to imagine two 190 centimeter adults sharing a bunk bed possibly fashioned for children. “That seems hazardous.”

“I mean, it held up through high school,” Miya replies, settling back again with the rustle of blankets. “But all the more reason to keep talkin’ to me. C’mon, what do you usually talk to Bokkun about?”

“Our teammates at Fukurodani, I suppose. Bokuto-san’s matches. What we ate for lunch.” _Rice, and you, lately,_ Keiji thinks as Bokuto lets out a particularly robust snore. “My work with Udai-sensei.”

“There. How’s work been?”

“Udai-sensei’s series was recently discontinued,” Keiji replies, and now it’s Miya’s turn to wince out a breath.

“Sorry ‘bout that.”

“No, it’s alright,” Keiji replies. Zom’bish had ended as well as any series sunk to a premature end could: Udai, unwavering, looked Keiji straight in the eye until their tea had cooled, and carefully pruned every plot, character, and thematic arc of his story until it fit into the mere seven chapters Keiji had been able to scrounge as a rookie editor.

It wasn’t until Udai’s series finale party that Keiji had been forced to unfold his catalogue of Udai’s weaknesses, the foremost of which was: _incredible mental fortitude, until he gets enough alcohol inside him._

 _“What if I get it wrong again?”_ Udai wept into his toilet an hour after his assistants had left his apartment. Keiji, sitting on the cold bathroom tile, held back Udai’s hair as he splintered apart beneath Keiji’s hands. _“What if I’m making you start from the bottom with me again, and it’s wrong?”_

 _“Then we’ll start from the bottom again a third time,”_ Keiji said.

At a different age, Keiji might have apologized—for Udai’s misfortune of being assigned an editor who had not even wanted the job, for Keiji’s inexperience in editorial office politics, for any one of the hundreds of small fumbles on Keiji’s part that may have contributed to Zom’bish’s cancellation—but that would alleviate Keiji’s guilt, not Udai’s.

Keiji swallowed back his anxieties, and said with all the certainty he did not feel, _“But I’m confident you will get it right this time. We can only focus on the step in front of us. Let’s regroup and try again.”_

“Udai-sensei is an excellent artist,” Keiji contemplates, reaching to his side table. He selects a volume from his growing collection of research material, a soccer manga he had bought because the earnest, hand-drawn recommendation display at the bookstore had charmed him. “There’s nothing I can do about Zom’bish now, but I’ve been reflecting on how a more skilled or experienced editor might have better conveyed Udai-sensei’s strengths.”

“What do you mean?”

“He loves all his characters, more than most other manga-ka I’ve met.” Keiji knows now that this fundamentally makes it one of Udai’s greatest weaknesses as well, and ranks it high on his list. “I tend to favor side characters as well, so… I allowed Udai-sensei to dwell on his minor characters for too long, and it confused his readers. I know better for next time.”

Miya replies after a thoughtful silence, “I used to skip Zom’bish while I was readin’ Vie ‘cause I’m no good with horror, but I’ll check it out now.”

“You don’t have to force yourself, we’re planning a sports manga next.” Keiji flips through the volume and smiles at the dozens of bright-eyed girls in jerseys and shin guards. He remembers how Udai’s eyes had caught the stadium lights in Sendai, more vivid than Keiji had seen since the news of Zom’bish’s cancellation, and grows ever surer of their decision. “Team sports provide plenty of characters for Udai-sensei to pour his love into, and for me to help share with the readers.”

“You gonna push for volleyball?”

“Udai-sensei was the one who suggested volleyball, actually. He was the ace of his team when Karasuno went to Spring Nationals.”

“He played volleyball too? What’re the chances?” Keiji can hear Miya suddenly sit up in his bed again, the leisure in his voice brightening to alert interest. “His name isn’t ringin’ any bells for me, he didn’t play with Hinata and Kageyama, did he? Or is ‘Udai’ a penname? Did you ever play him?”

Keiji finds himself as pleased as if he were a parent whose child was being praised. “Ah, no, he’s a few years older than us. He’s acquainted with Hinata though, I believe.”

“Wait, is he gonna base the main character on you? A setter that winds up as captain by the end?”

“No, not at all,” Keiji dismisses, wincing in embarrassment at the thought—and abruptly recalls, not quite stinging but with the shock of ice water in his mouth, that one of the reasons for the unspectacular end of his athletic career is currently speaking to him. “I… I would be happy to oblige if he asked to reference my experiences, but I think wing spikers are better suited to be protagonists. Someone like Bokuto-san, or Hoshiumi-san, or Udai-sensei himself.”

“I dunno, speakin’ as an ex-wing spiker myself, I think Tsumu would make a more excitin’ main character than me,” Miya muses after a moment of thought. “Especially in terms of rivals and stuff. He had plenty more than me.”

Keiji pauses, surprised. Though Inarizaki hadn’t won Nationals in their third year, Miya had been the ace of the powerhouse team that had crushed both Karasuno and Fukurodani on its crusade to center court—it wouldn’t take much editorialization to convert his story into a manga. “You don’t want to be the protagonist?”

“It’s not _that_ weird, you said that you aren’t suited to be a protagonist either.” Then Miya’s voice goes soft again, almost private, in the way late night phone calls often seem to draw out. “But y’know, when I’m readin’ manga, I’m like you: I always like the side characters more.”

Something in Keiji flinches—not sensing danger, but perhaps something neighboring it. There’s no provocation in what Miya had said, but Keiji’s defenses fly up nevertheless.

Ah, that was it. Keiji had not even realized he’d lowered them.

Before he can read further into it, three sharp knocks sound from Miya’s end of the line, and a woman’s distant voice sternly calls out, “Osamu Miya, open this door.”

Keiji hears Miya gasp, and the subtle tension disperses. “No way. Did Tsumu tattle on me? We’re _twenty-three years old_.”

“I suppose I should let you go, then,” Keiji says as he listens to Miya drag himself toward the door with deliberate sloth. He glances to the _donabe_ on his drying rack, then to Bokuto half-swallowed by his _kotatsu_ , and adds before his nerve fails, “The next time we run into each other on the V.League circuit, please let me treat you to a meal to repay you for everything.”

Miya’s footsteps halt altogether. “You sure? I eat a lot, I’m expensive.”

“I’m not a small eater myself, but I think I can foot the bill for one meal,” Keiji replies. “Besides, you’re the one who told me to accept offers of free food without question.”

“Yeah, but even after I said that, you still left me five thousand yen when you visited the shop,” Miya shoots back, then lets out an impatient sigh. “Man, I don’t think there’s a Black Jackals game near Tokyo ‘til February. You better be plannin’ on keepin’ your promise ‘til then, Akaashi-kun.”

“I could offer you free food more often if you had a Tokyo branch to visit,” Keiji says, almost unable to help himself. He means it less as a genuine suggestion than as the quickest joke in the strange script cobbled between them—it’s late at night, and Keiji is warm with Kita’s rice and Bokuto’s company, and right now Miya is just an easy, subdued voice on the other end of the phone line.

And Keiji finds, as he leans his head back and lets it knock gently into the wall behind him, that he wants to know if he’s somehow lowered Miya’s guard in the same way that Miya had disarmed Keiji’s.

He thinks, perhaps, he has, because Miya lets out the laugh Keiji has only heard for Atsumu, for Bokuto: loud, and uncomplicated, and—Keiji supposes—fond.

“Akaashi-kun,” Miya says, the last traces of his laugh still in his voice, “Don’t tempt me.”

Keiji hears a rapid succession of knocks, followed by Atsumu’s muffled voice shouting, “What’re you gigglin’ on the phone for twenty minutes for, are you a teenage girl?!”

“Good luck to you and Udai-sensei on the volleyball manga,” Miya adds above the furious rattle of a doorknob. “From what it sounds like, Udai-sensei lucked out endin’ up with you as his editor.”

The drift of Keiji’s gaze wavers; he studies the back of Bokuto’s head pillowed by his bent arm, then looks to his own lap. The back of his throat hurts again. “Thank you, Miya-kun. I hope your hand heals quickly. Good night.”

Keiji ends the call, and after a silent minute, kneels to the carpet to shake Bokuto’s shoulder.

“Bokuto-san, help me move the _kotatsu_ and I’ll set out a _futon_ for you,” Keiji says quietly as Bokuto groans and flops onto his back.

Blearily, Bokuto squints at the phone in Keiji’s hand. “Who were you on the phone with? I kinda thought I heard you talking for a while.”

Keiji hesitates as he unplugs the _kotatsu_ cord from the outlet, then replies, “Miya-kun.”

“Oho?”

“Bokuto-san.”

“I _told_ you that you two were friends, Akaashi,” Bokuto grins, then squawks as Keiji flips the blanket off his legs to let the cool air flood under the table. As Bokuto whines and curls into a ball, Keiji glances into his dim kitchen. The dozen jars of homemade pickles that his parents had gifted to him during his visit home for New Years are scattered between various cupboards and his refrigerator, too many for even Keiji to reasonably eat.

He wonders if it would be strange to ask Bokuto to bring a couple back to Osaka for Miya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I meant to post this a few days ago, but I got distracted by the Volume 44 extras and the light novel! (It’s like 1 am now so I’ll probably do some edits in the upcoming week ha ha)  
> -The light novel chapters about Tenma, Akaashi, and Zom’bish paint a very different picture of what happened than what I made up here.... but I guess that’s just how fanfic goes sometimes :’D  
> (-I just realized that HQ ended between now and when I last posted, so I might edit the Sendai reunion between Akaashi and Bokuto a little too!)  
> -The soccer manga Akaashi bought was “Farewell, My Dear Cramer”  
> -I didn’t mean for Osamu to get injured in literally every scene, I’m sorry Osamu  
> -This chapter made me realize that this fic might end up being Much Longer Than I Anticipated, we are crawling _very_ slowly through my outline ha ha  
> 


	4. Teppanyaki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do I seem like the kind of person who’d make fun of someone when they’re puttin’ in the effort to cook for me?”
> 
> The frankness of the question makes Keiji look up from his work, but Miya’s eyes are still fixed on Keiji’s hands. The spatulas clang noisily against the steel plate.
> 
> _Atsumu-san, and rice, and his old captain from Inarizaki._
> 
> “No,” Keiji answers. “You really don’t, Miya-kun.”
> 
> Miya’s eyes rise from the chopped cabbage, meet Keiji’s that are looking down at him. The corners of his mouth tug up on either side of the fist against his chin.
> 
> “You can call me Osamu, y’know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Teppanyaki_ : A type of Japanese cuisine cooked on top of an iron griddle (teppan). Some common teppanyaki dishes are okonomiyaki (savory pancake) and monjayaki (pan-fried batter).
> 
> (Content warnings: Alcohol, drunkenness [specifically, they’re in possession of their faculties but some decisions are made while not 100% sober], vomiting, over-eating)

**[January 06, 2019]**

**OnigiriMiya** **  
**[19:32] Your mom’s eggplant karashizuke is unreal what the hell **  
**[19:32] Ive already eaten like half the jar

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[19:36] Thank you, I’m sure she’ll be glad to hear that **  
**[19:37] I like karashi mustard, so she’s been adding it to the pickling lees lately

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[19:37] Is she single

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[19:38] ? **  
**[19:38] No, she’s married to my father

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[19:39] Hmm **  
**[19:39] I can wait

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[19:40] Please stay away from my mother

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[19:41] You said she thinks Im handsome

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[19:42] I should have never told you.

* * *

In Shibuya, Keiji lays plans with Udai.

“I like the unorthodox choice of making the protagonist a libero,” Keiji says, “But I’m concerned that the narrative momentum will be disrupted every time he switches out of the match.”

The back of Udai’s head bounces against the pleather booth, cushioned by his cloud of dark hair. He groans, a little too loudly for the family restaurant they’re in, but concedes, “You’re right, but when you think ‘hero’, isn’t the first position that pops into your head the libero?”

“As someone who has entrusted my back to several skilled liberos, I couldn’t agree more. However, for the sake of a weekly manga, I believe we should try a different approach.”

Udai huffs out a laugh, then jots down _entrusted my back to several skilled liberos_ onto his tablet, already replete with character sketches and flowcharts of potential story arcs. “Man, Akaashi-san, sometimes you spout the most theatrical lines out of nowhere.”

Keiji recalls the steady encroachment of sports comics into his apartment’s bookshelves, volumes of _Slam Dunk_ and _Prince of Tennis_ displacing Murakami and Kawabata like an invasive species. He frowns into his coffee cup. “Perhaps I’ve been reading too many shonen manga as of late.”

“No, I like it!” Udai assures him, laughing again in a way that is congenial and generous and reminds Keiji that despite his wild, round features, Udai is quite a few years senior to him. “And hey, if we settle on the protagonist being a wing spiker, maybe his rival can be a libero!”

“I thought you were partial to a rival middle blocker?”

“Well, I think his rival could be in _any_ position,” Udai muses as he traces over one of his sketched character concepts. “That’s why it’s so hard to choose one.”

Keiji hums thoughtfully as he picks up the 2019 Spring Tournament pamphlet from between them, scanning through the player highlights and team lineups for a crumb of inspiration.

 _No need to be conservative,_ Keiji thinks, studying the youthful faces and wondering if each of them, as Keiji had been convinced during high school, thinks of themselves as a protagonist. _The entire purpose of choosing a sports theme is to prove his skill with ensemble casts._

Keiji ventures, “He could conceivably have a rival in _every_ position. There’s no rule saying that a protagonist is limited to a single rival.”

Udai’s stylus freezes. The beginnings of something fierce and manic alights in his eye. He opens a fresh document on his tablet, hovering so closely that his screen illuminates the tip of his nose, and furiously begins to sketch.

Keiji leans back with the pamphlet, content to finish his coffee in leisurely silence. They’d attended Day 4 of the Spring Tournament without much personal investment—Karasuno had lost the ticket to Nationals to Aobajohsai in Miyagi’s qualifiers, while Fukurodani had finished their season yesterday in the quarterfinals—but Udai had insisted on a meeting over dinner, hoping he could bottle some of the youthful electricity in the air and spill it onto his pages.

Watching a sprawling web of ideas bloom across Udai’s tablet, Keiji thinks it might have done the trick.

 _First, let’s worry about the oneshot for the special issue,_ Keiji reminds himself, tamping down his enthusiasm. _We will prepare with the intent to serialize, prepare a story that will continue for years, but the step in front of us is a solid oneshot._

Keiji’s phone buzzes, and he excuses himself.

**[January 08, 2019]**

**OnigiriMiya** **  
**[19:43] <Image attachment: _19.42-08-jan-2019_ > **  
**[19:43] Bought the 3rd volume of Zombish today **  
**[19:44] I really liked that teahouse lady, Tomoe **  
**[19:44] Wish we couldve found out what happened to her and her brothers

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[19:46] ! Thank you for buying it **  
**[19:46] I’m with Udai-sensei now, we’re discussing his new series

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[19:47] Oh cool the volleyball one?

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[19:48] Yes, we attended the Spring Nationals semifinals today as research

“Osamu Miya said he enjoyed the third volume of Zom’bish,” Keiji remarks once Udai’s sketching falls into a lull. At Udai’s quizzical blink, Keiji clarifies, “Atsumu Miya’s twin brother. I bought his onigiri for you at the match in Sendai.”

Udai brightens. “Right, yeah! I still think about those onigiri! Man, I’ve gotta remember to grab some of those the next time I go to a Black Jackals game.”

“He said he liked Tomoe-san,” Keiji adds, and Udai’s cheerful expression suddenly goes a little wistful.

It’s been a couple of months since the final chapter of Zom’bish, close enough to sting, but distant enough not to ruin. Self-pity is not on the list of Udai’s weaknesses, but Keiji often wonders if he had granted Udai enough time to mourn. The end of Zom’bish had been a slow taper of corrections for the printed volume and final illustrations, dovetailing into the mounting preparations for his new series—but it had been Udai’s decision, not Keiji’s, to plunge forward rather than pause to let the grief catch up to him.

Udai breaks the clumps of ice in his soda with the end of his straw, and rattles it in the glass. “Yeah?”

**[January 08, 2019]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[20:03] <Image attachment: 20 _.01-08-jan-2019_ > **  
**[20:03] From Udai-sensei, in gratitude for buying Volume 3 and for the onigiri in Sendai.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[20:03] Wait **  
**[20:04] Is that Tomoe? **  
**[20:04] Did he draw her for me??

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[20:05] Yes, Tomoe-san was one of his favorites too. He’s glad to hear you liked her

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[20:05] Holy shit **  
**[20:05] Could you thank him for me **  
**[20:06] I have to rub this in Tsumu’s face give me a sec

Udai laughs when Keiji reads Miya’s message to him.

“Twins, huh?” Udai muses as a waitress puts down another plate of french fries and tops off Keiji’s decaf. “A pair of twins on the same team is kind of neat, don’t you think?”

“If you’re interested in family members as teammates, Sakusa and Komori also used to play together at Itachiyama,” Keiji offers instantly, hesitant at the prospect of Miya opening Shonen Vie one morning to find himself and his brother, thinly fictionalized, across the pages. Miya is acquainted with Udai now, perhaps would assume that Keiji had been the one to suggest a pair of volleyball twins—and even the possibility makes Keiji strangely self-conscious.

“Don’t worry, it’s only a character concept to consider!” Udai reassures Keiji with a wave of his hand. After a beat, however, he adds, “Though I wouldn’t say no if you happened to have any of their game tapes from when they played together. Inarizaki’s a powerhouse, right?”

A recording of Keiji’s 2014 Spring Nationals games probably exists somewhere in his parents’ house; given its tragic ending, Keiji has never watched it, except for during the post-game meeting following Fukurodani’s loss. He wonders how he would feel to watch it now, knowing Miya a bit better than he did in high school.

“If you would like to watch Atsumu and Osamu Miya end my high school volleyball career in two sets, then sure.”

Surprise and pity and sympathy all flit through Udai’s expression before he settles on a helpless smile. He nudges the plate of fries closer toward Keiji.

“Jesus, never mind,” Udai chuckles. “I don’t think I want to watch that after all.”

* * *

**[February 09, 2019]**

**k_akaashi** **  
**[10:53] I’m planning to attend the Japan Railway Warriors game in Sumida next weekend. Do you have any food allergies or preferred restaurants?

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:25] As long as you’re paying I’m up for anything

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[11:31] What is your favorite food?

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:32] Food

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[11:33] I see **  
**[11:33] And the non-joke answer?

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:34] Not a joke

 **k_akaashi** **  
**[11:35] That is what I feared. Immensely unhelpful.

 **OnigiriMiya** **  
**[11:35] Ha ha!

* * *

In Sumida, they meet again.

Keiji does not fully comprehend that it has been two months since he last saw Miya in-person until he and Udai are already in the Onigiri Miya queue, and something flails in the pit of Keiji’s stomach.

There has always been a part of Keiji’s brain that whirs away ceaselessly—not as loudly as it had in high school, but a constant white noise that Keiji has learned to better manage once he understood that it would never fully go silent—and it pipes up now in warning, ambiguous and alarming.

 _Why?_ , Keiji wonders, scanning over Udai’s head for whatever else might have set his whole body bracing as if for a fall. _Was this something I was supposed to prepare for?_

But he and Udai are just three customers from the front of the line, then two, then one—then a pair of women clip their wallets shut and step away, leaving nothing but the counter in front of Keiji.

After two months he finds himself a mere meter away from Miya, so near that he would only need to stretch out an arm to reach him.

Miya’s face is tilted downward as he straightens the rows of pickles in their plastic containers, the brim of his hat obscuring him up to the end of his nose. Keiji recalls the quiet afternoon in Onigiri Miya when he had watched Miya’s face at this angle as he steadily pressed rice between his salt-sprinkled palms.

Then his head tips up, closed-lipped smile courteous and professional—and there’s the infinitesimal shift, the millisecond-millimeter flutter that Keiji knows to look for, before his whole posture eases.

Something in Miya’s smile reaches his eyes now, even though Keiji’s done nothing to earn it.

Keiji finds himself thinking again, _Was this something I was supposed to prepare for?_

“Udai-sensei, what a surprise!” Miya says with warmth, ignoring Keiji entirely. “Thank you again for that drawin’ of Tomoe, I’m a big fan. I can’t wait for your new series.”

Keiji blinks. He glances down at Udai at the same moment that Udai tilts his head up to look at him.

“Thank you, it’s nice to meet you, Miya-san,” Udai replies, smiling uncertainly.

Miya chuckles, then shifts his stance to include Keiji too. “And nice to see you too, Akaashi-kun—but you’re not a surprise, I’ve been expectin’ you.”

“Hello, Miya-kun,” Keiji says, the corner of his mouth pulling up wryly despite himself. “Thank you again for supporting Udai-sensei.”

“Of course. One of everythin’ and the pickles?”

“And Udai-sensei’s order,” Keiji adds as he drops a few coins into Miya’s palm. “We’ll pay together and see if Shonen Vie will let us write it off as a business expense.”

“They’re not gonna do that, so thank you for the treat, Akaashi-san,” Udai laughs as he selects three onigiri.

Keiji watches Miya finish bagging their order. Black hair, and black cap, and black sweatshirt rolled up to the elbows, a head taller than virtually everyone in the Sumida City Gymnasium except for the volleyball players: he’s a familiar figure cut out of time, near-identical in every instance Keiji has met him, with only the backdrop shifting as their paths intersect across Japan.

“Are you still alright to get dinner after the game?”

“Been waitin’ since New Years.” Miya returns the change by hand as usual, coins warm against Keiji’s skin. “I’ll message you after the game once we’re done cleanin’ up, though it might take a bit.”

“That’s not a problem,” Keiji says, accepting the purchase and fishing through the bag for Udai’s order. He realizes, belatedly, as he hands it over: “Udai-sensei, would you like to join us for dinner?”

Udai, already unwrapping his tarako onigiri, freezes in mid-motion.

“I... wouldn’t want to intrude,” Udai says after a pause.

“It’s more free food, Akaashi-kun’s treatin’,” Miya adds.

“Um,” Udai says. He clears his throat and shakes his head. “I mean, no thank you, but I’m going to go straight home to get some more character roughs done. And I told Ito-sensei that I’d help him with his manga as an assistant tomorrow, so I shouldn’t stay out too late tonight, y’know?”

“Alright,” Keiji says. “Be careful not to overwork yourself.”

※ ※ ※

When he and Udai settle into their seats, Keiji opens the package of pickles.

It’s myoga ginger, pickled in karashi mustard.

※ ※ ※

In Shibuya, Keiji cooks for Miya.

“Did you pick teppanyaki ‘cause I’m from Kansai?” Miya asks as he pulls off his winter coat to settle cross-legged across from Keiji. “I’m only away from Osaka for the weekend, I’m not that homesick yet.”

There is still a quality of unreality about Miya’s presence, like a glitch in a video game that’s spawned him somewhere other than his native habitat of a volleyball gymnasium, or his vendor’s booth, or his restaurant back in Osaka City. Black hair, but no black cap; a head taller than everyone in this teppan griddle restaurant, but black sweatshirt traded for something wool and so dark blue that Keiji can’t quite make out the weave.

It’s unmistakably Osamu Miya, but there’s a dissonance to his existence in Keiji’s favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Shibuya.

“No, I simply like this restaurant. If you’d prefer, we could order monjayaki since I’m pretty sure it originated here in Tokyo,” Keiji replies as he pulls out a menu. It’s the same teppanyaki joint that he’s frequented since his days at Fukurodani, first flanked by the volleyball club, then Shirofuku and his small circle of university friends, then, most recently, Udai; it’s nothing remarkable, but the portions are big and the ingredients are fresh, and it gives Keiji something to do with his restless hands. “I usually get barbeque when I’m treating Bokuto-san, but I thought you might be tired of meals with rice.”

“It’s a nice change of pace for sure, but I’m _never_ tired of rice,” Miya replies, endless sincerity beneath his mirth.

Miya asks Keiji to order, which, to Keiji, already feels monumental—but it isn’t until the waiter hands Keiji the spatulas and the towering bowl of cabbage, pork, shrimp, and tempura flakes that Keiji fully realizes his oversight.

“I suppose I’ll be cooking it for us,” he says, both to himself and to Miya as he rises to a knee.

Miya glances up from oiling the flattop, tugging his sleeves up his forearms as the griddle heats up. “You took the bowl, so I figured. Want me to cook it?”

“No,” Keiji decides before he can second-guess himself, and scoops the ingredients onto the teppan with a satisfying sizzle. He’s made monjayaki dozens of times before, and it isn’t a preparation that requires particular grace—even when Komi had spilled half the batter off the edge of the griddle, or Udai shook the nori flakes dispenser so hard that the cap and all the contents had fallen out, they’d still ended up with delicious, bubbly monja—but there’s something about Miya sitting across from him that makes Keiji’s hands feel as awkward as the first time he had put his donabe down on the stove grate with a loud, clumsy scrape.

“You don’t need to watch so closely,” Keiji tells Miya, catching him staring near-unblinking at the spatulas in Keiji’s hands as they chop the ingredients into small pieces.

Miya props his chin on a fist, elbow on the edge of the table, and replies, “I like watchin’ people cook.”

“It makes me nervous to have a chef observing me.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“That isn’t quite how nerves work, I believe.”

“Do I seem like the kind of person who’d make fun of someone when they’re puttin’ in the effort to cook for me?”

The frankness of the question makes Keiji look up from his work, but Miya’s eyes are still fixed on Keiji’s hands. The spatulas clang noisily against the steel plate.

_Atsumu-san, and rice, and his old captain from Inarizaki._

“No,” Keiji answers. “You really don’t, Miya-kun.”

Miya’s eyes rise from the chopped cabbage, meet Keiji’s that are looking down at him. The corners of his mouth tug up on either side of the fist against his chin.

“You can call me Osamu, y’know.”

Again, Keiji ensures that his hands do not deviate from their rhythm even as Miya’s question catches the rest of him off guard. He gathers the ingredients into a pile at the center of the teppan and forms a well.

He rolls the name _Osamu_ across his mouth, between his teeth.

“No, thank you,” Keiji says, carefully putting the spatulas down to mix the remaining batter in the bowl with a pair of chopsticks. “I’m the sort of person who’s more comfortable calling people by their family names.”

Miya snorts in amusement. “I’m always called by my first name in order not to get mixed up with Tsumu. It’s no big deal.”

“It’s not as if there are many occasions for me to confuse you with Atsumu-san when we’re speaking,” Keiji says as he pours the batter into the little crater of stir-fried cabbage, pork, and shrimp, leaning back as it sputters and spits steam. “I rarely talk to Atsumu-san, much less both of you at once.”

“Hmm,” Miya says, expression neutral but considering. “You call Tsumu by his first name, though.”

The batter bubbles, molten, as Keiji busies himself with preventing the liquid from spilling across the griddle. He quickly tallies the people he calls by first name—family members, his neighbors’ children, and the three partners with whom Keiji became close enough to call them _Yukie-san_ and _Hiroki-san_ and _Aya-san_ in private—then _Atsumu-san_ emerges, strange and incongruous, like teeth hitting the hard pit of a plum.

“It’s not out of friendliness,” Keiji guesses as he judges the batter thickened, and collapses the wall of chopped ingredients into it. “I don’t even call Bokuto-san by his first name.”

“What’s it out of, then?”

“I don’t remember. I was already calling him ‘Atsumu-san’ by the time Bokuto-san joined the Black Jackals.”

Miya makes another thoughtful noise, though his attention is rapt on the bubbling monja before him. Without blinking, he says, “I could call you ‘Keiji-kun’ like Tsumu does if that makes it easier for you.”

“I’d very much rather you not,” Keiji replies, mild but immediate. “If you do, I’ll start calling you ‘Myaa-Sam’ _._ ”

Miya chuckles again. “That nickname’s kinda gross when it’s not comin’ out Bokuto’s mouth, but I think that’d embarrass you more than it’d embarrass me.”

“Samu-Samu, then.”

“Again, pretty gross when it’s not Bokkun sayin’ it.”

“Samu.”

There’s a pause, like a wince, the only sound the sizzle of the monjayaki between them and the noises of other patrons nearby.

 _Tsumu and Samu, Samu and Tsumu_. Even Keiji recoils at the sound of those names spoken in his own voice.

“Jeez,” Miya murmurs into his fist, relenting. “Now that one’s not for you. It’s _really_ gross when it isn’t Tsumu sayin’ it.”

“Let’s stick with surnames, then,” Keiji agrees as he rests the spatulas on the empty bowl and reaches for the nori flakes. He motions to the monjayaki with a nod. “How did I do?”

He watches with some trepidation as Miya picks up the small spatula from his napkin, gathers a bit of the bubbling monja from the flattop before him, blows to cool it, and takes a bite.

Miya sighs contentedly, and Keiji feels the tension ebb out of his shoulders.

“I _toldja_ , Akaashi-kun,” Miya says appreciatively, “You had nothin’ to worry about.”

※ ※ ※

They order a second serving, this time with squid and mochi, because both Keiji and Miya are the big eaters they had assured each other to be and Miya wants a turn to cook on the teppan. Keiji can’t help but compare himself to how at ease Miya always seems to be while cooking before a spectator, even when it isn’t onigiri. He doubts Miya is the sort to succumb to nerves in any part of his life, but Keiji is again reminded of the thought that had struck him at the counter of Onigiri Miya: Osamu Miya’s hands are meant to cook.

“There’s somethin’ extra fun about cookin’ on a big grill,” Miya sighs, nearly as delighted in the teppan as he is in the food itself.

Keiji stifles a laugh and scrapes off the last crispy bits of the monja with his spatula. “Don’t you get weary of cooking all day? All the people I’ve known in a culinary career have rarely wanted to cook off the clock.”

Miya looks up at him doubtfully. “I have a hard time believin’ Shirofuku-san doesn’t cook.”

“She and I both enjoy eating more than cooking, so we ordered takeout quite often,” Keiji admits. He counts down his other partners on his fingers. “Then there was another food science student who cooked frequently at first, but he stopped once he began to intern as a nutritionist at an elementary school… Then a patissiere, who cooked a bit, but never baked for me except for birthdays and anniversaries.”

“Not Valentine’s?”

“Especially not Valentine’s Day. She would be so sick of chocolate after Valentine’s Day that she refused to touch it outside of work for weeks.”

“It sounds like you find yourself around a lot of culinary folks, Akaashi-kun.”

Keiji looks up from his hands, then folds them into his lap. “Oh. I suppose I have.”

“Is that on purpose?” Miya asks, tapping his spatula against the teppan _._

“No,” Keiji replies. He wonders if there’s something to decipher behind the question. He decides he doesn’t care if there is if Miya won’t say it outright, and begins to sift through his belongings for his wallet. “Perhaps I happen to run into them more frequently than the average person would because of how hungry I am.”

“I could believe that,” Miya says lightly, tidying the area around the teppan as a waitress approaches to collect their payment. “In my case, I end up cookin’ a lot even though it’s my job because of how hungry _I_ am.”

Keiji smiles, thinking of Bokuto’s fierce insistence of _Aha, it’s the_ eating _! Myaa-Sam’s favorite thing in the world is_ eating _good food!,_ and repeats, “Yes, I could believe that as well.”

He pats his abdomen. He’d like to continue sharing in Miya’s favorite thing in the world, since it ranks quite high on Keiji’s list of favorite things in the world too—he isn’t hungry anymore, but he thinks he could keep going.

“There’s an izakaya a few blocks away that I frequent with Udai-sensei and the Shonen Vie editors,” Keiji remarks as Miya pulls on his winter coat. “Their chicken and spring onion skewers are excellent, and to be honest, I’d like a beer.”

As if the two of them had not just tucked away four servings of monjayaki _,_ Miya grins and replies, “Lead the way, Akaashi-kun.”

※ ※ ※

The beer is heaven, cold and refreshingly bitter against the warmth in Keiji’s stomach and the savory negima yakitori. He’s relieved at Miya’s unabashed pleasure in them, a little victory even though Keiji’s certain by now that Miya would eat almost anything with gusto, and soon their table is scattered with platters of grilled shishito peppers, sashimi, chicken wings, and chilled tofu with bonito flakes and soy sauce.

“Did Bokkun tell you he tried to pick a fight with me at the end-of-year Black Jackals social?” Miya remarks as he accepts an order of assorted pickles from a server.

Keiji looks up from selecting a pod from the little bowl of boiled edamame before him. “Pardon?”

“He drank a little too much and got rowdy,” Miya continues, catching the bean that jumps from its shell in Keiji’s hands. He pops it into his mouth and continues, “Don’t worry, I made sure he didn’t hurt himself.”

“Thank you,” Keiji replies, bewildered. Bokuto is a happy drunk— _rowdy_ , as Miya had described, but utterly benign. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“I mean, I don’t think Bokuto’s ever been in a fight before, and I’ve been in plenty.”

“I need to have a conversation with him,” Keiji murmurs gravely.

Miya laughs and clears away a few empty glasses to slide over the pickles. “Aw, don’t scold him. He didn’t even remember it, and he apologized later. I can show you the text. I thought it was cute.”

“I am not going to scold him, Bokuto-san is an adult. We will have a conversation.”

“Sure sounds like you’re gonna scold him.”

“What in the world could he have wanted to fight about?” Keiji sighs, nudging his glasses out of place to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I’m quite sure that the nearest thing to a fistfight he’s ever been in was when he accidentally elbowed Fukurodani’s soccer team captain in the face during the lunchtime rush.”

“He wanted to make sure I was bein’ nice to you.”

Keiji opens his eyes, lets his glasses slip a little too far down the slope of his nose as he looks up. “What?”

“He told me he wanted to talk to me before the party, but by the time we ran into each other again, Inunaki-san and Tomas-san had gotten a few too many drinks into him,” Miya explains, unbothered, as he splits the last of their tofu with the back of his chopsticks. “He snuck up on me from behind, put me in a headlock, and said that since the two of us are messagin’ each other a bit, I’d better not be sayin’ mean things to you.”

Covering his face with a hand, Keiji mumbles, “On second thought, perhaps I _will_ scold Bokuto-san.”

“Don’t, it was kind of fun,” Miya reassures him. “I haven’t been in a tussle with Tsumu for a while. Not that it was much of a tussle, Hinata and Tomas-san pulled him off real quick, so we didn’t do much more than stumble around.”

Bokuto shouldn’t be fighting on Keiji’s behalf at all, much less with someone who hadn't done anything to deserve it—Keiji cannot believe that Bokuto’s first brawl had been not only self-initiated, not only for Keiji’s sake, but _preemptive_. He groans into his hand again, and he can hear Miya sliding plates toward him placatingly.

With surprising simplicity, Miya says, “You know, he only did it ‘cause he loves you.”

“I know.” Keiji looks up and chuckles at the half-circle of dishes and drinks Miya has crowded around him in what Keiji is certain must have been a comforting gesture. He collects his beer and the remaining tofu Miya had halved earlier and adds, “But that’s not a good enough reason to put his career and safety at risk.”

“Well, I’m not sure Bokkun would agree with that,” Miya replies as he retrieves Keiji’s abandoned bowl of edamame. “And I thought it was sweet. I doubt Tsumu would go around threatenin’ folks for my sake.”

The tofu is silky in Keiji’s mouth, the soy-soaked katsuobushi briny and bright. He swallows his bite and thinks, _What an absurd notion._

“Of course he would,” Keiji says.

Miya huffs out a laugh, and occupies himself with stacking their cleared plates on the edge of the table. “I think you’re overestimatin’ Tsumu there.”

“I don’t think so,” Keiji replies. Whether it’s the alcohol, or the food sitting warm in his stomach, or because Miya had smoothed the uncomfortably candid edge of it by saying it first, Keiji finds it in himself to add, “He loves you, after all.”

He watches Miya consider it, his mouth set in an unwavering line, which Keiji knows by now to mean that he does not want Keiji to read his expression.

“Gross,” Miya finally says, and Keiji smiles into his glass. Miya reaches toward him to rearrange what’s left of their food and muses, “I do think Bokkun would be pretty scary if he really got mad, though.”

“I don’t think you could do anything to make Bokuto-san that angry.”

“Oh?” Miya challenges. There’s a competitive streak in Miya, Keiji knows, but this hardly seems like an arena anyone should want to triumph in. “Suna and Gin and Aran-kun are always sayin’ that I’m the meaner twin.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Hey, _that’s_ not nice, Akaashi-kun.”

“I’m not a particularly nice person either.”

“Well, you’d better hope I don’t tell Tsumu about you bein’ mean to me, or you’ll be gettin’ a shovel talk too.”

When Keiji looks back up over the rim of his glass, he finds Miya examining his own glass of beer, fist against his chin, smiling into it.

※ ※ ※

It’s past eleven by the time Keiji and Miya pay their tab at the izakaya. In recent years, between literature major classmates and editorial staff coworkers, Keiji has rarely found himself in the company of someone who can match his appetite. He wonders if he may have even eaten too much, caught unaware in Miya’s flow.

But he’s just the pleasant sort of tipsy that softens things at their corners, not stumblingly drunk or incoherent; laughter loosens a little more easily from his throat, but not any more loudly. He guides Miya along the route to the train station without trouble, and idly wonders if he can recall the name of the late-night taiyaki shop he and Shirofuku had discovered together during university.

“I think it ended in - _shima_ ,” he murmurs as he scrolls through the cursory search results on his phone.

Miya’s nose is pink from the cold, likely from the alcohol too, but he seems steady enough on his feet. “If you were still hungry, we could’ve stayed at the izakaya a little longer.”

“I’m actually quite full, but I’d like something sweet now.”

“Is that how you live your life, Akaashi-kun? The monjayaki was greasy, so you went out to find a beer—then the izakaya food was salty, so now you’re goin’ out to find somethin’ sweet?”

“It surprises me that you of all people would find that strange,” Keiji says a little defensively and Miya laughs, loose and unhurried.

“No, I’m just sayin’, when I let my stomach do the decidin’ like that, I end up eatin’ forever,” Miya says, grinning up at the illuminated signs above them. “And even though I wouldn’t mind doin’ that with you, we’d miss the last train.”

“Taiyaki for another day, then,” Keiji decides as he locks his phone and returns it to his coat pocket. He glances over to ask if Miya needs help figuring out the train line to his hotel just in time to see Miya, face still upturned toward the city lights, catch his shoe on an uneven edge of the pavement.

Keiji snags his elbow well before Miya topples, more preventing him from losing his balance than catching his fall. Still, Miya’s hand flies up to Keiji’s wrist to steady himself, cold fingers wedging under the strap of Keiji’s wristwatch—and Keiji abruptly remembers, just as Miya wheezes out a startled thanks and begins to pull away—

“Your finger, the one that Atsumu-san crushed with the mochi mallet on New Years,” Keiji says, catching Miya’s hand again, tangling his long fingers with Miya’s. He brings it closer to his face, squinting in the dim light cast by the streetlamps and neon signs, and breathes out a condoling chuckle. “That’s unfortunate, the nail grew back a little warped.”

The hand between his stiffens, and Keiji looks up. Miya is frozen, wide-eyed and bewildered.

Perhaps Keiji _did_ drink a bit too much. They might be some sort of friends as Bokuto had insisted, but Miya isn’t Bokuto or his other teammates from Fukurodani: they probably aren’t close enough for skinship to a degree like this. Keiji only knows Miya’s hands by sight, or by the incidental brushes of fingers in the exchange of coins and plastic bags, or by the dozens of onigiri pressed into the shape of Miya’s palms that Keiji has held and eaten and known.

“Sorry,” Keiji says, relinquishing his hand. “That was untoward of me.”

Miya remains wordless, still staring at Keiji. Keiji thinks he should apologize to Miya for laughing as well, perhaps assure him that in his time as a setter, Keiji has had plenty of ruined fingernails heal back good as new. But then Miya’s expression shifts, and it’s too difficult for Keiji to resolve while Miya stands backlit against the fluorescent lights of the convenience store across the street.

Miya reaches across to him. His hand curls again around Keiji’s wrist, warm now as his fingers slide under Keiji’s sleeve, and tugs him away from the sidewalk.

Into a narrow alleyway between two darkened shops, past a pile of cardboard boxes labeled _azuki red beans_ stacked higher than their shoulders; Keiji has the passing, nonsensical thought that they might have stumbled upon the taiyaki shop he had been searching for earlier. The hand at his wrist travels up the line of his forearm to his elbow, to his shoulder, to the collar of his coat turned up against the cold, until the familiar, foreign palm settles at the back of Keiji’s neck and draws him forward.

It’s surprisingly gentle, not at all what Keiji would have expected from someone so fixated on hunger. Just a closed-mouth press of lips that’s over before Keiji can even startle.

Miya pulls back, but hovers near enough that Keiji can feel breath warm against his skin. His eyes are searching over Keiji’s face, pupils blown wide in the meager streetlight, waiting for something that Keiji can’t quite guess.

Waiting for permission, Keiji realizes. He feels a swoop in his stomach, the same as when he’d walked into the Sumida City Gymnasium this afternoon. This _had_ been something he was supposed to have prepared for after all.

It’s a bad idea. He’s certain Miya knows this too. He’s certain that this is only because they’re both the same sort of busy and the same sort of lonely, and if they’d had a few drinks fewer they would consider all the ways this could complicate matters between Bokuto and Atsumu as teammates, and return to their route to the train station.

 _And Bokuto-san and Miya-kun are friends as well,_ Keiji thinks.

But—ah, well. They’re twenty-three, Keiji reasons, young enough to be reckless about things like this; Miya is so warm before him, immediate, already receptive and waiting. Best of all, if this does end poorly, Miya will be five hundred kilometers away by the end of the weekend.

Keiji brings his hands to the cool line of Miya’s jaw, breathing a soft _okay_ as he does, and guides Miya back to him.

Miya smells like beer, and the izakaya, and the teppanyaki restaurant, but beneath that there’s something woodsy and pleasant—cedar, Keiji thinks, strongest right where Keiji’s hands lay at the juncture of jaw and neck. He drops one hand down under the open lapel of Miya’s coat and is flattered by the pulse he feels thundering under the warm wool of his sweater.

 _We’re going to miss the train,_ Keiji’s mind supplies, ever-revolving, even in moments like this. It quiets for a moment as Miya coaxes the seam of Keiji’s lips apart, then puts forth, _My glasses are about to fall off_.

He grasps Miya’s sweater with the hand at his chest, pulls him forward until he’s flush against him and he can feel the cold wall bump against the back of his shoulders.

His mind continues on.

_Is it closer to my apartment or to his hotel? Or could we risk being seen by someone who might know me from my visits to the izakaya and just find somewhere nearby? Does he even intend to do more than this?_

He curls his fingers against the close-cut hair behind Miya’s ear and savors the way Miya’s breath hitches. Miya’s hands slide down under Keiji’s coat to press against his side, his back, restless enough that it nearly aches, and now Keiji _does_ know Miya’s hands, unequivocally.

Miya murmurs a low _Akaashi-kun_ , a rumble against Keiji’s lips that drops straight through him.

_I call Atsumu-san by his first name because he called me ‘Keiji’ first._

Keiji opens his eyes and blinks.

This is not the moment for this thought.

But the memory comes unstuck, unearthed by all the others, loosened by his conversation with Miya in the teppanyaki shop and Udai’s request for Keiji’s final game tape weeks ago:

_Keiji sees the moment Onaga’s heart breaks: every spike thwarted by Rintarou Suna, unable to thwart every quick by Atsumu and Osamu Miya. He is supposed to be their bastion of defense. He is going to be their captain after Keiji is gone._

_Their senpai, who had entrusted Fukurodani to them a year ago, are watching them fall apart from the stands._

_When the referee’s whistle shrills, neither of them are surprised to see Onaga’s #6 held aloft for substitution._

_Keiji’s words fail, as they so often do no matter how many novels he reads, but he cannot allow Onaga to voice the apology so evident in his wide, devastated eyes._

_“Please rest, I will expect you back in a few rallies,” Keiji manages to say. Captaincy still fits so poorly over him, but he had been Onaga’s teammate long before he was ever his captain. He hopes that Onaga will believe at least in that._

_He watches Onaga bite his lip, bow, and turn to the bench, shoulders hunched over and trembling._

_From behind him on the other side of the net he hears Atsumu Miya’s unmistakable drawl, loud enough that he’s certain it is meant for Onaga’s ears too:_

_“Aww, poor Keiji-kun. He’s havin’ a rough break with that number 6, huh, Samu?”_

_Keiji turns just in time to catch Osamu Miya glance back at him with a look of searing pity, the same one that Keiji will see again years later in a vendor hall in Sendai. He replies, “I do feel a little sorry for him, Tsumu.”_

_Keiji does not allow a single muscle in his body to react._

_Despicable._

_Keiji swears that in the seven points he has left before he leaves volleyball forever, he will dump one more ball over their heads just so he can murmur back, “There is no need for you to worry on my behalf, Atsumu-san.”_

And now he is kissing Osamu Miya in a dark back street in Shibuya. He had paid for his dinner, has his lovely donabe drying upside-down on the dish rack of his apartment. How preposterous. How utterly, utterly ridiculous.

Keiji laughs, an ugly splutter against Miya’s mouth.

Miya pulls away, brow furrowed in confusion and chagrin; then the heat drains from his expression entirely and Keiji feels a plummet in his stomach.

“You’re not sober enough for this,” Miya says.

“No, that’s not it,” Keiji says, suddenly unsure of where to put his hands. He leaves them suspended somewhere in the vague space between them. “But I just recalled that in high school, I hated you more than I’ve ever hated anyone.”

Now Miya’s hands drop away completely, blank surprise displacing the concern, and cold air rushes under Keiji’s coat into the newfound absence. There’s another twist in Keiji’s gut, more violent than any before—and he finally realizes that it’s not just disappointment, not just attraction, not even just drunkenness.

It’s the five onigiri head-start that Keiji had come into this evening with before matching Miya bite-for-bite and drink-for-drink over the last few hours.

Keiji is quite proud of his composure as he says “Excuse me for a moment, Miya-kun”, and the strength of his arm as he pushes Miya two stumbling steps away from him, and his good aim as he throws up into one of the empty azuki bean boxes piled just to the right height next to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I’m sorry I made their first kiss bad but it had to be bad so we could get the full Pink in the Night “I’ve kissed you once before but I didn’t do it right can I try again, try again, try again…” experience  
> \- I’m also sorry that I left you with this ending when I haven’t updated in a long while and probably won’t update again in another long while ha ha  
> -I’ve had this chapter like 75% done since mid-August, I just... didn’t want to write the kiss scene... Also work and school. Also I accidentally wrote a 12k Udai character study. Also I did [5/7 days of OsaAka week.](https://twitter.com/i/events/1277545620333449216?s=20)  
> \- Once when I was in my early twenties I got so excited at a buffet that I ate a little of everything, and then had to excuse myself to throw up in the bathroom because I over-ate… so this comes from personal experience  
> -I also stopped italicizing Japanese words because it was getting kind of difficult to read, and I realized I should probably also be italicizing "onigiri" if that were the case? And all those italics would make for a pretty annoying reading experience ha ha!


	5. Tamagoyaki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miya trails off, quiet. Keiji waits. The refrigerator hum gently fills the silence.
> 
> “Even though we didn’t play each other as second years, I still think of you more as Bokuto’s setter than Fukurodani’s captain,” Miya says finally. He looks up, gray eyes going a warmer brown, like Atsumu’s, under Keiji’s kitchen lights. “The second we stepped onto the court for that quarterfinals match… it freaked me out, seein’ you out there without Bokuto. A setter without his spiker. Suddenly made it way too real that Atsumu was about to be the same, as soon as I left him at the end of the tournament.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Tamagoyaki_ (translated: “grilled egg”): A Japanese omelette made by rolling together layers of fried egg.
> 
> (Content warnings: Swearing, very minor mentions of vomiting and kitchen knife accidents)

**[February 16, 2019]**

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [23:53] Atsumu **  
** [23:53] Do you remember when we played Fukurodani **  
** [23:55] Hey   
[23:57] Hey   
[23:58] Hey **  
** [23:59] Damn it why do you go to bed so early now

※ ※ ※

Miya emerges from the blindingly lit convenience store, and the question in his offerings is clear: warm tea for an upset stomach, or a sports drink for drunkenness?

Keiji thinks that the electrolytes in the Pocari Sweat would do him better than tea in either condition, but he pointedly accepts the bottle of Ito En nonetheless. He washes away the taste of sick with a few mouthfuls of tea, then waits for Miya to excuse himself and depart.

Instead, rather too kindly for Keiji’s liking, Miya says, “I think I oughta help you home.”

“I only over-ate,” Keiji says.

“Well, even so.”

Keiji could understand being abandoned in disgust in the alleyway, or Miya’s customer service courtesy forcing him to accompany Keiji to the station, or even some loyalty to Bokuto taking him all the way to Keiji’s platform: but Miya follows Keiji onto his train without hesitation, and even settles in the seat beside him in the otherwise desolate car.

The doors slide shut. Miya does not even look at them.

“You’re welcome to sleep over,” Keiji says, occupying his fidgeting hands by searching for 24-hour cab companies on his phone, “But I’d be happy to pay for your taxi back to your hotel.”

Miya looks over his shoulder at him and smiles a little. He’s handsome even after a night of drinking, even under the harsh fluorescent lights.

Keiji would like Miya to be five hundred kilometers away from him.

“I don’t mind sleepin’ on a sofa,” Miya replies.

※ ※ ※

In Setagaya, Keiji inwardly thanks Konoha.

Though it had frustrated him at the time, Keiji is grateful that his upperclassman had dropped by unannounced that morning, forcing Keiji to tidy his apartment in the fifteen minute window between Konoha’s cheerful text and the buzz from the lobby intercom.

The apartment isn’t spotless, but at least his shoes are lined up in the genkan and there are only two unwashed mugs in his sink. He should feel shy inviting someone into his apartment so late at night—but Keiji only finds himself growing steadily more exhausted the nearer he gets to his bed, and he’s certain that any ill-considered attraction Miya might have held for him earlier could not have survived witnessing Keiji dispose of a cardboard box of his own vomit.

“I apologize, it’ll be too short for you,” Keiji says as he catches Miya sizing up his sofa. He turns into his bedroom and opens the closet, kneeling to haul out a folded futon from the bottom shelf. “It’s a little too short for me as well. I have a futon for when Bokuto-san stays over.”

“I’ve got it,” Miya says, suddenly crouched beside Keiji, hands tugging the futon and blankets out of Keiji’s grip. His tone is still infuriatingly soft. “How ‘bout you go take a shower?”

Keiji pauses, then brings his sleeve to his nose. “Do I smell?”

“Everyone smells after teppanyaki,” Miya replies, frowning after he tugs up the collar of his own sweater and gives it a sniff. “Go on, I’ll go after you.”

The guest should be offered the shower first, but Keiji is too weary to argue. As he turns to the bathroom across the hall, he distracts himself by enumerating the tasks he’ll have to complete before bed: lay out a new toothbrush set and clean towels; find a change of clothing that Miya’s slightly broader frame might fit, or else lend him one of the hoodies that Bokuto has left behind over the years; turn off the automatic timer on his coffee maker; write down the train lines to Miya’s hotel and leave it somewhere discreet but noticeable, in the probable case that Miya would like to leave before Keiji wakes in the morning—

Through the doorway, Miya quietly asks, “What’d I do to you in high school?”

Keiji stills, hand resting on the bathroom door handle.

He remembers Onaga’s anguished eyes, the flinch in his shoulders as he heard the Miya twins’ voices, thick with derision:

_ Aww, poor Keiji-kun. He’s havin’ a rough break with that number 6, huh, Samu? _

_ I do feel a little sorry for him, Tsumu. _

Keiji runs his thumb over a nick in his bathroom door’s paint. He thinks of how similar Miya had sounded when he murmured to Keiji in the vendor hall in Ota,  _ I just feel a little sorry for you, since you’re always the one doin’ the chasin’, between you and Bokuto. _

“You were unkind to one of my underclassmen,” Keiji replies after a moment. He turns the handle and steps onto the cool tile of his bathroom. “Please don’t worry about it. It’s been years, and I’m certain I’ve said worse in the middle of a match.”

※ ※ ※

**[February 17, 2019]**

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [01:08] Tsumu?

※ ※ ※

Keiji emerges from the bathroom fifteen minutes later and pauses when he sees Miya sitting cross-legged on the futon at the foot of Keiji’s bed, attentively flipping through a volume of  _ Big Windup!. _

Miya freezes at Keiji’s surprise. “Shit. What’d I do.”

“Nothing,” Keiji replies, lifting one of Bokuto’s Black Jackals hoodies from his dresser and offering it down to Miya. “I should have moved the coffee table for you before I showered. I usually lay out the futon in the living room, but I don’t mind if you sleep here. I apologize in advance if I accidentally step on you while getting out of bed, however.”

Miya blinks at Keiji’s words, then drops his face into his hand.

“ _ Shit _ ,” he repeats, muffled. “Sorry, I’m too used to sharin’ a room. I’ll move.”

“It’s alright, I won’t have to turn off the timer on my coffee maker if you sleep here,” Keiji assures him quickly.

Miya reluctantly accepts the change of clothes, but lingers. His hesitance is so uncharacteristic that Keiji’s skin begins to itch. “If you’re sure. I really don’t mind movin’ the futon. Or sleepin’ with my feet stickin’ over the arms of the sofa.”

“There are towels and a toothbrush on the bathroom counter,” Keiji replies instead, stepping aside to let Miya shuffle past. When he hears a faucet begin to run from beyond the bathroom door, he takes a memo pad from his desk and heads into the kitchen.

Keiji wishes Miya would revert back to that indecipherable distance from their first few encounters. He dislikes being pitied, but he would prefer condescension—even revulsion—to the tired, considerate worry with which Miya’s been surveying him for the past hour.

He opens the browser on his phone and begins to jot down the directions to the nearest station, and the departure times for the train to Miya’s hotel.

_ Perhaps just the train lines, _ Keiji thinks, ripping the top sheaf off the notepad and crumpling it.  _ He probably remembers the way to the station _ . He doesn’t want it to seem as if Miya is inconveniencing him. Keiji has been the inconvenience this evening, if anything—and though he’d like nothing more than to have his apartment to himself to wallow in his own embarrassment, there’s something rude about presenting Miya a comprehensive list of every step he will need to take to leave Keiji alone.

Keiji misspells the kanji for the station where Miya will have to transfer. He crosses it out. It looks frantic. Keiji squeezes his tired eyes shut, rips off the page, and starts again.

After a third attempt, Keiji capitulates and busies his hands with other tasks. He washes the two mugs in the sink; he refreshes the reservoir in his coffee maker and fills the grounds. The scent of the coffee soothes him. He places a cup next to his kettle in case Miya would like tea, then realizes he’s chosen one of the teacups that his father had cast for him as a graduation gift. He quickly moves to return it to the cupboard along with the donabe in the drying rack.

“That middle blocker,” Miya says, and Keiji jumps a bit. He turns, and finds Miya even more incongruous than in the teppanyaki restaurant: in Bokuto’s sweatshirt and Keiji’s sweatpants, standing in the doorway of Keiji’s kitchen past midnight as he dries his hair with a towel.

“Who?”

“I don’t remember his name. The really tall one, younger than us. Was he the one you were talkin’ about?”

_ Onaga-kun,  _ Keiji thinks, surprised that Miya remembered him at all.

“I don’t resent you for it,” Keiji says, and he means it. He turns the teacup over in his hands and realizes, belatedly, that the door to the cabinet housing Miya’s donabe is still wide open.

“I am… a bit overprotective of Onaga-kun,” Keiji continues, placing the teacup over his scribbles on the memo pad. At least he can hide that. “The year before, I was subbed out of our match against Mujinazaka because their strategy targeted me until I faltered. My errors nearly cost my upperclassmen the game. To see it happening to my own kouhai upset me, especially when I knew he could hear you and your brother disparaging him from the other side of the net. Don’t apologize,” Keiji adds when he sees Miya open his mouth. “There’s no need to apologize for a strategy operating properly, and as I said before, I’ve said worse.”

“I wasn’t gonna apologize,” Miya  replies. He drapes the towel over his shoulder and leans against the door frame, crossing his arms. “You said Inarizaki’s strategy was pressurin’ your middle blocker until he slipped up, and it was. But I remember our plan targetin’  _ you _ too. Would’ve been a much shorter match if you’d just given up like you were supposed to.”

The corner of Keiji’s mouth pulls up mirthlessly. “You give me too much credit. Inarizaki won in straight sets.”

“Both sets were real close, though.” Miya lifts his phone into the air and waves it a little. “I checked the score on the Volleyball Monthly website archives. You pushed both of those sets into the thirties.”

Oh. Keiji hadn’t anticipated that Miya would be troubled enough by what Keiji had said to look into it. “Well, your brother started calling me  _ Keiji-kun  _ in the middle of the match without permission _ , _ and I couldn’t let the game end until I managed to get a setter dump past him.”

Miya’s eyes widen for a moment. “Did you?”

“I did. It felt very good to watch all of you dive to the floor.”

“Congratulations,” Miya says, cracking a faint smile. “Guess I really shouldn’t try to call you by your first name.”

“It’s not as if it stopped Atsumu-san. He calls me  _ Keiji-kun _ to this day.” Keiji flips the notepad face-down on the counter and continues with his tasks. “If I remember correctly, Inarizaki lost to Kamomedai in the semifinals. I’m sorry that I prevented your final win with Atsumu-san from being a satisfying victory.”

Keiji exchanges his father’s teacup for an innocuous mug Bokuto had bought for him as a souvenir in Canada. He pulls out bottled water from the fridge, and considers rinsing the pint of Shizuoka strawberries Konoha had delivered the day before; when Keiji closes the refrigerator door, he’s surprised to see Miya still watching him from the doorway.

“Onaga-kun is fine now too,” Keiji adds. Miya still seems uncertain as he hovers in the threshold of the kitchen, tentative in a way that Keiji can’t quite understand, so he continues. “He was Fukurodani’s captain the year after us, and Fukurodani did well at Spring Nationals 2015. They made it to Day 3 again. And now he’s a player for the Tamaden Elephants while finishing university—”

“ _ I hated that game, _ ” Miya blurts over the last few words of Keiji’s assurances, and now it’s Keiji’s turn to fall silent.

“That quarterfinals match when we were third years,” Miya says more quietly, as if confirming to himself that he had really said it aloud. “I don’t remember everythin’, but I do remember wantin’ it to end as soon as possible.”

Keiji watches Miya cast his gaze to the floor, scrub idly at his hair again with the towel. Miya swallows, and continues, “Day 3 of Nationals is Hell Day. We’d just barely won against Karasuno that mornin’. The Karasuno match was exhaustin’, but it felt good—payback for the year before, and all that. I thought Fukurodani’d be the same, but...”

Miya trails off, quiet. Keiji waits. The refrigerator hum gently fills the silence.

“Even though we didn’t play each other as second years, I still think of you more as Bokuto’s setter than Fukurodani’s captain,” Miya says finally. He looks up, gray eyes going a warmer brown, like Atsumu’s, under Keiji’s kitchen lights. “The second we stepped onto the court for that quarterfinals match… it freaked me out, seein’ you out there without Bokuto. A setter without his spiker. Suddenly made it way too real that Atsumu was about to be the same, as soon as I left him at the end of the tournament.”

Keiji feels struck, like a rung bell. His teeth ache just looking at Miya, the ghost of his eighteen year-old self flitting over Miya’s features.

“I was on edge durin’ the whole match. And I couldn’t explain why. What was I s’pposed to say? You were just out there, playin’. I managed not to get benched, but Tsumu chewed me out real good every time we had a time out.

“But y’know, part of me wanted to see you crush us. Like if you were alright without Bokuto, it’d be some kind of proof that Atsumu’d be alright without me too.” Miya sighs, and smiles ruefully at his bare feet. “And another part of me wanted to see you fall apart, to prove that Tsumu  _ did _ need me, at least a little. Of course, it ended up bein’ somewhere in-between. We won, but you held your own, and you were the one who left with all the dignity.” He rubs a knuckle over his eyes tiredly. “It was stupid of me, gettin’ all worked up like that. I was the one who chose to leave, after all.”

“It wasn’t stupid,” Keiji says. Miya looks up at him from the other end of the kitchen, spent; Keiji wonders why late-night honesty is so much more difficult in-person than over the phone, but persists. “Both of you chose to follow your dreams rather than stay together. Atsumu-san made the choice to leave you, as much as you made the choice to leave him.”

“Maybe. But I was the one who forced the issue.”

“You were graduating. It would have come up eventually. Asking you to continue playing volleyball would have been like asking Atsumu-san to give it up to help you open Onigiri Miya.” Keiji resists the urge to cross his arms, to fidget; he senses that something will dissipate if he does, and he wants Miya to understand that he means it when he says, “I don’t think you were mistaken in choosing the path you did.”

Miya looks at Keiji for a quiet moment, then says, “I’ve never thought it was a mistake.”

“I know,” Keiji says. “But sometimes it’s nice to hear someone else confirm it. Just because you know you made the right choice doesn’t mean it can’t be difficult.”

Miya hums in acknowledgement. His lips press together, and he reels his expression back to millimeters, milliseconds; Keiji wonders if he’s misspoken, then realizes that he, too, doesn’t have much more that he’d like to share.

They’re getting better at this candor formerly reserved only for Bokuto and Atsumu, but it’s still a little foreign. There’s no need to force it.

“I have a few more things I’d like to do before I go to bed,” Keiji says. “Feel free to sleep first, Miya-kun.”

Miya considers him for a moment, then nods. His shoulders loosen; he drops his arms to his side, and turns back toward Keiji’s bedroom. Before he steps away, he says, “I’m sorry, for whatever I said in that game. I probably meant it. I’m not the nice twin.”

_ I do feel a little sorry for him _ , Miya had said, looking at Keiji, seeing someone else entirely.

“I know,” Keiji replies.

※ ※ ※

After watering his houseplants and checking his inbox one final time for emails from Udai, Keiji slips into his darkened bedroom.

Miya is tucked into the futon, squinting at the dimmed screen of his phone, arm bent at an odd angle to keep the charger cord plugged in at the far side of Keiji’s desk. Keiji gingerly steps over the blanketed hills of Miya’s legs and slides into bed.

“Do you drink coffee in the morning, Miya-kun?” Keiji asks as he removes his glasses and places them on the nightstand.

Miya looks up from his phone. “Yeah.”

“And how do you take it?”

“Cream and sugar, usually.”

“I apologize, I don’t have any cream. I can run out tomorrow morning to buy some.”

“You don’t have to,” Miya replies. “I’ll dilute it with water or somethin’.”

He laughs a bit at Keiji’s grimace, illuminated by the glow of his phone screen.

“Do you drink it black, Akaashi-kun?”

“I do.”

“Yeah, you strike me as that sort of guy.”

They lapse back into the fragmented, sleepover lull between midnight conversations. It reminds Keiji of summer training camps at Fukurodani: the strange way sleep eludes him, regardless of how tired he is, when there’s another restless body nearby. He listens to the soft tapping of Miya’s fingers against his phone screen, watches the liquid light shift over the walls as Miya absently navigates between apps.

“And, Miya-kun,” Keiji says, “Do you like your tamagoyaki sweet or savory?”

“Are you askin’ me how I like my eggs in the morning?”

“Well, no. I’ve just thrown up. It’s not the best moment for flirtation.”

“You’ll really make me eggs in the morning?”

“If you’d like me to. It’s the only dish I can cook.”

“Savory.”

“Alright. And when will you be opening a Tokyo branch of Onigiri Miya?”

Miya kicks the frame of Keiji’s bed. The light of his cellphone blinks off. “Go to sleep, Akaashi-kun, or I’ll  _ walk _ back to Osaka right now.”

Keiji chuckles. He calls out a quiet  _ goodnight, _ and allows himself to be pulled into sleep.

※ ※ ※

Keiji wakes to the sound of a phone buzzing.

He curls into his comforter, sparing one eye to check his phone: 7:33 am, no new calls.

From the floor, he hears a long inhale of breath as Miya stirs. The buzzing stops, and Miya, quiet and hoarse with drowsiness, mumbles, “ _ What. _ ”

There’s shouting on the other end of the line, loud enough that Keiji can hear it.

“Shut up,” Miya says, voice muffled with his pillow. “I texted you seven hours ago, why’re you callin’  _ now. _ Dumbass.”

Another pause, more distant yelling that Miya does not wait to finish before interrupting, “Everythin’ shook out. Shut up. You’re so goddamn loud. Asshole.” Pause. “Love you too. Go away. Bye.”

The phone drops onto the futon with a soft thump, and Miya’s breathing evens back to sleep almost immediately.

※ ※ ※

In Setagaya, Keiji brushes his teeth, forces down a glass of water, then confronts his morning with his coffee mug in hand.

Keiji’s Sundays are for proper breakfasts, sit-down meals served warm on dishes rather than the slices of bread or microwaved leftovers he eats over the sink on rushed weekday mornings. But he only has one salmon filet, and just enough tofu for a small pot of miso soup—and though he trusts Miya, there’s something about leaving him asleep in his apartment while he dashes out to the nearby bakery that Keiji isn’t quite comfortable with.

Keiji takes another swig of coffee.

_ The first step is rice, _ Keiji decides, pulling out the donabe from the cupboard and heading toward his container of Kita Farms rice.  _ Having enough rice can right a lot of wrongs. _

As he lets the rinsed rice soak, he flips on his television to a low volume, and surveys the rest of his kitchen for any clue for his next step.

He hears Miya pad across the hall into the bathroom while he’s hulling the strawberries that Konoha had delivered from Washio the day before. Miya makes his way into the kitchen, first looking at Keiji, then at the coffee pot; Keiji offers him his sugar jar as Miya adds a splash of water to his mug in lieu of milk.

“I’m glad you’re actually usin’ it,” Miya says after a few sips of coffee, voice scratchy and Kansai accent a little thicker with sleepiness.

Keiji follows Miya’s gaze to his donabe on the stove.

“Yes, well,” Keiji says. He slides the bowl of strawberries toward him over the counter. “I only have the time to use it on the weekends. Would you like an ibuprofen.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m alright,” Miya replies as he accepts a halved strawberry. He munches on it while Keiji pulls a carton of eggs from the fridge. “What’re you makin’?”

“Tamagoyaki. I have no idea what to make beyond that.”

“Can I look?”

After a few moments of internal debate, Keiji’s curiosity of what Miya might magic up from the ingredients overcomes the inherent mortification of a professional chef looking in his fridge. Keiji nods.

In the meantime, Keiji busies himself with the tamagoyaki. It’s one of the few dishes Keiji has any confidence in feeding to another person, to the extent that he’d invested in a good quality tamagoyaki pan during university—but though he’d already prepared monja for Miya and Miya is currently distracted by Keiji’s refrigerator, a habitual thread of anxiety runs through Keiji nevertheless.

_ Do I seem like the kind of person who’d make fun of someone when they’re puttin’ in the effort to cook for me?,  _ Miya had asked the evening before.

Keiji cracks three eggs into a bowl, then adds dashi powder, water, soy sauce, and a pinch of salt in practiced measures. As he whisks it with his cooking chopsticks, he turns on the stove under his tamagoyaki pan. The heft of the pan is familiar in Keiji’s hand, reassuring, and he feels the grip of apprehension loosen; the process flows easily, one step into the next, after so many repetitions. He greases the surface with a folded rectangle of paper towel soaked in vegetable oil, and opens a cabinet to find his seaweed sheets—

“Is it alright if I use this?” Miya asks, startling Keiji out of his rote process.

Keiji looks behind him to see Miya poking through a wide array of ingredients: most of the vegetables in Keiji’s crisper, a plastic packet of konjac, both tofu and aburaage, both red and white miso, and a frozen slab of meat that Keiji can’t quite identify.

“Sure,” Keiji says as he fetches his largest cutting board from its stand on the counter. “What are you planning to make?”

“Pork miso soup,” Miya replies, accepting the board and opening three drawers before Keiji points to the one housing his kitchen knives. “Tsumu and I ate a ton growin’ up, so our mom always ended up puttin’ the whole fridge into her miso soup. She adds taro too, but I found a potato. I think it’ll work fine.”

“Does your family use both white and red miso in your soup?”

“Yeah. Yours?”

“Just white, but I like any sort,” Keiji replies, returning his attention to the tamagoyaki pan. He draws a line across the pan with the egg on the ends of his chopsticks, judges it hot enough to begin cooking, then pours in the first layer of egg, tilting the pan to distribute it evenly. After popping the bubbles with his chopsticks, he rolls the sheet of egg to one end of the pan.

He oils the pan again before pouring in the second layer and folding the rolled egg into it; then he pours in the third. He carefully places a rectangle of nori onto the slightly-set egg.

He looks over his shoulder, hearing Miya opening and shutting cabinets again.

Miya smiles at him apologetically. “Sorry. Vegetable peeler?”

_ My kitchen is too small for two people, _ Keiji thinks as he guides Miya back with a hand to the elbow, opens a drawer, and uncovers the peeler from under his can opener.

Keiji carefully finishes the tamagoyaki with two more layers of egg, listening for any more of Miya’s rummaging to step away from the stove and help him locate spoons and measuring cups and pyrex dishware. He presses his tamagoyaki a few more times against the squared corners of his pan until the edges are sharp, and rests it on a cutting board to cool.

“What can I do?” Keiji asks as he washes his dishes. “Before you decide, please know that though I can use a kitchen knife safely, I am not particularly skilled.”

Miya looks up from the impressive pile of carrots, daikon, potatoes, and burdock he’s neatly cut in the time it’s taken Keiji to complete his tamagoyaki. He scans over the ingredients before passing over a knob of ginger and the pocket of fried tofu soaking in hot water.

“Can you peel and grate that?” Miya asks. “Then once the aburaage’s cooled off, you can cut it into strips.”

“Alright,” Keiji replies, again having to steer Miya a few steps aside to pull out his grater from the drawer that Miya is standing before.

It’s quiet as they cook, but Keiji finds that he does not mind the absence of conversation. There’s the low murmur of the television, the sound of knives on cutting boards, the thump of coffee mugs being set on the counter after intermittent sips; Miya seems to pick up on the flow of Keiji’s kitchen before long,  though it’s still a bit too cramped for the two of them to navigate around comfortably.

“Holy shit, you weren’t kiddin’, you’re really good at that,” Miya remarks when Keiji slices into his perfectly rectangular tamagoyaki. Miya whistles admiringly at the dark, even swirl of nori among the fine layers of egg as Keiji attempts to divide the roll into uniform portions.

“It’s the only dish I can cook,” Keiji repeats.

“Yeah, but if you’re  _ this _ good at it, then who needs anythin’ else?”

“You flatter me. At least wait until after you’ve tasted it to decide if it’s good,” Keiji says, frowning at the lopsided, wedge-shaped slice at the end of the roll. He notes to put this piece on his own plate once they begin to eat.

Keiji grates daikon as he watches Miya finish frying the sliced pork in fragrant sesame oil. There’s the same unaffected ease in his movements as when he’s shaping onigiri, and from the night before at the teppanyaki restaurant. Miya scoops in the chopped onions, then the quarter-circle slices of daikon and carrot, then the rest of the vegetables; he pours in the dashi, and Keiji flinches at the hiss of the stock hitting hot metal while Miya barely blinks an eye. Miya scans over the utensils on the counter, negotiates with Keiji again in the narrow space of the kitchen, and finds Keiji’s ladle in the first drawer he opens.

The timer on Keiji’s phone chimes, and Miya shuts off the burner under the donabe. It’s an action that seems infinitely familiar before Keiji realizes he’s only ever seen it in the video of Miya teaching him how to cook donabe rice.

“Good timin’,” Miya murmurs approvingly, perhaps to himself, or to Keiji, or to the rice itself.

By the time Miya has skimmed the soup and dissolved the miso through the metal strainer, hand poised over the stove dial to shut it off just before the soup begins to boil, Keiji has set the rest of breakfast on the coffee table. Keiji passes pairs of soup and rice bowls over the kitchen counter and Miya returns them, steaming and laden with food.

“Akaashi-kun, I might be wrong, but I think there are a lot fewer strawberries in the bowl than I remember,” Miya remarks as he crosses from the kitchen into the living room.

“Perhaps I ate a few while I was waiting,” Keiji responds, pressing his hands together the instant that Miya settles on the floor cushion across from him. “Itadakimasu.”

Miya snorts, then follows, “Itadakimasu.”

※ ※ ※

There is virtually no conversation for the first few minutes of breakfast, which Keiji distantly registers as awkward if not for his fixation on the food before him.

Of course, Kita’s rice, his mother’s pickles, and his own tamagoyaki are delicious, and their comforting familiarity raises the deliciousness by a few degrees—but Miya’s pork miso soup warms and fills him, in a way Keiji had not realized he had been craving during these winter months. Keiji has been chasing this feeling, he thinks, in his meetings with Udai over soba and udon, in the paper cups of conbini oden he’s bought with his old Fukurodani teammates after drinks, in the ozoni mochi soup with his parents at New Years, and in the bowls of late-night ramen when he couldn’t bring himself to cook after a long day of work.

Yet Keiji finds that Miya’s tonjiru—from his own well-used bowls, in his living room a little later than usual on a Sunday morning—satisfies something in him that all the other hot meals had not .

“Your tamagoyaki’s good,” Miya says from across the table, not so much breaking the silence as ending it. He takes another slice from the serving dish, and Keiji belatedly realizes that it’s the crooked end-piece that he’d wanted to hide from him.

“Don’t take that one,” Keiji begins to say, but it’s already in Miya’s mouth.

Miya finishes chewing and swallows. “Sorry. It was the biggest piece.”

“It was poorly cut.”

“Still tastes good,” Miya maintains, reaching out to spoon more red shiso-pickled eggplant and cucumber onto his plate. “But if you want, gettin’ your knives sharpened helps with cuttin’ straight. It’s safer to have ‘em sharp too. Most of my knife injuries were from a dull knife slippin’ while I was tryin’ to cut something. I’m sure there are tons of stores in Tokyo that’ll sharpen your knives for you, or you could buy a sharpener for yourself. God, Akaashi-kun, your mom’s shibazuke is  _ wild _ .”

“I’m certain she’d be happy to hear you say that,” Keiji replies, a little amused at Miya’s sudden volubility on the subject of cooking knives and pickles. He takes the open jar from Miya and places a few pieces of pickles on his own rice.

“Did your mom teach you how to make tamagoyaki?” Miya asks, catching Keiji off-guard.

Keiji can’t help but smile a little as he twists the cap of the jar back on. “No. I learned how to make tamagoyaki because my mother’s rather bad at it.”

Even at thirteen, Keiji had formed a reasonable list of his mother’s weaknesses:

_ One, her habit of foregoing sleep when immersed in her work. _

_ Two, her illegible handwriting, the result of trying to write as quickly as she thinks. _

_ Three, her complete ineptitude in cooking tamagoyaki. _

_ Four, her worry over leaving Keiji home alone too often as a child. _

Keiji, weary of being the root of her fourth weakness, had decided to combat it by solving the third.

He had asked their housekeeper, Noda-san, to teach him how to make tamagoyaki on the evenings when he did not have volleyball practice and neither of his parents were home. Under Noda-san’s supervision, Keiji had mastered the skill after a month of intensive study, and quietly presented the perfect little rolls of egg to his parents one Saturday morning.

_ You don’t have to fret, _ Keiji had hoped the tamagoyaki would convey.  _ I’m alright. _

Growing up in a home where the three occupants passed like trains in a station, Keiji had learned how to love and be loved in acts without words: the sliced apples in lemon water that his mother left for him in the refrigerator before work; the issues of  _ Volleyball Monthly _ that began to appear on the dining room table when Keiji had decided to continue the sport into high school, the magazine’s spine already creased to the articles about Bokuto and Fukurodani, the scent of his father’s coffee rising from the pages; plates of tamagoyaki covered in plastic wrap, ready to be microwaved for breakfast or a late dinner.

“The tonjiru is delicious, by the way,” Keiji remarks, poking through his soup with his chopsticks, delighted to find a piece of pork hiding at the bottom of his bowl. “Your mother must be a wonderful cook.”

“She is,” Miya replies with such plain and unguarded affection that Keiji knows that it must be true. “I got excited when I saw you had pretty much everythin’ to make her tonjiru. Your fridge is pretty impressive for a guy livin’ on his own—way better than Atsumu’s fridge, at least.”

“Oh, I don’t usually have so many ingredients. I was planning to make mixed rice for dinner.”

Keiji looks up from draining his bowl of the rest of his soup to find Miya frozen.

“Wait, you should’ve said you were savin’ those ingredients for somethin’,” Miya says, casting a slightly despairing glance toward Keiji’s refrigerator. “You’re gonna have to go grocery shoppin’ again. I used almost  _ everything. _ ”

“Miya-kun, I assure you that these ingredients found much better use in your tonjiru than they would have in anything I could make. I’ll have something else for dinner.”

“I should’ve just made onigiri,” Miya groans. Keiji can see the business owner part of Miya’s brain calculating ingredient costs in his head. “They barely use anythin’ at all. One of the ingredients is just  _ salt. _ ”

“Your tonjiru is  _ delicious _ ,” Keiji repeats, standing and offering a hand out toward Miya’s empty bowls. “Would you like seconds of soup or rice?”

* * *

“Oh,” Keiji realizes just as he scans his train pass over the ticket reader, “Your donabe.”

Miya, glancing back from the complex map of Tokyo metro lines mounted on the station wall, replies, “What about it?”

“I should have returned it to you.” Keiji pulls out his phone as he and Miya settle into adjacent seats and checks to see if there’s enough time to dash back to his apartment and retrieve the donabe before Miya’s train arrives. He still isn’t certain why Miya had asked him to walk the short distance to the station with him, but it had felt rude to decline, and Keiji reasons that he can run errands while he’s out.

“I don’t think I can attend any more matches this season until the finals,” Keiji muses, “And it’s not assured that the Black Jackals will make it to the final six.”

“They’re gonna, especially with Sakusa and Hinata on the team this season,” Miya says. He pulls out one of the volumes of  _ Big Windup! _ that Keiji had lent to him as they left his apartment. “Besides, it seems like you’re still usin’ the donabe. Don’t worry ‘bout givin’ it back ‘til you’re done with it.”

“In that case, you may not see your donabe again until the next V.League season,” Keiji replies seriously, and Miya laughs.

“That’s fine too,” Miya says, smiling as he flips through the manga to find where he’d left off the night before. “It’s not a library book. I’m not gonna charge a fee if you end up holdin’ onto it for a little longer than you thought.”

“It makes me nervous to borrow something so expensive, especially when we live so far away from each other.”

Without looking up from the manga in his hands, Miya kicks the heel of Keiji’s shoe. “We can just play it by ear. There’s no point in worryin’ about things endin’ way before they have to.”

Keiji resists the urge to kick Miya’s foot back twice as hard and instead opts to knock his knee against Miya’s across the lip of his seat. “This may come as a surprise to you, Miya-kun, but I am actually much better about preventing myself from spiraling into those sorts of thoughts than I used to be.”

Miya makes an assenting noise, then shoves the side of his knee against Keiji’s with all the retaliatory competitiveness that comes from being Atsumu Miya’s twin for twenty-three years. Keiji nearly rolls his eyes but matches Miya’s force, relenting only when the announcement for Miya’s train sounds over the P.A. system.

Miya grins as he stands, and waggles the small stack of manga volumes at Keiji as he says, “Thanks for lendin’ these to me. I’ll give ‘em to Bokuto to bring back to you the next time he heads home. I’ll see you when I see you, Akaashi-kun.”

Keiji waves as he watches Miya join the queue to the car. He is suddenly relieved that he had agreed to bid farewell to Miya at the public train station, unsure of what he would have said had they parted ways alone at his apartment.

※ ※ ※

**[February 17, 2019]**

**tsumu_miya** **  
** [10:19] Hey uh **  
** [10:19] Couldn’t help but notice that Bokkun came back this morning and said he’d spent the whole night with his family **  
** [10:20] Which means he wasn’t with Keiji-kun **  
** [10:20] And you weren’t with me last night **  
** [10:20] Anything you’d like to share

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [10:34] I kissed Akaashi and he immediately threw up

**tsumu_miya** **  
** [10:35] WHAT **  
** [10:35] EXCUSE ME???

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [10:35] He said he hated me in high school

**tsumu_miya** **  
** [10:36] WAIT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [10:36] I slept over but just like on the floor

**tsumu_miya** **  
** [10:36] SAMU STOP MY STOMACH HURTS HAHAHAHAHAHA

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [10:37] Tried to make it up to him by cooking breakfast **  
** [10:37] But I used up everything in his fridge so now he has to go buy groceries again

**tsumu_miya** **  
** [10:37] LAME **  
** [10:38] TRIED WAY TOO HARD TO LOOK FANCY AT THE START

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [10:38] Now Im on the train back to my hotel **  
** [10:39] What the fuck do I do now

**tsumu_miya** **  
** [10:40] DUNNO BUT I’M PRETTY SURE I’M WINNING IN OUR CONTEST OF WHO’S LIVING THE BETTER LIFE NOW HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [10:40] He’s really good at making tamagoyaki though **  
** [10:40] And he lent me manga **  
** [10:41] And now my hair smells like his shampoo

**tsumu_miya** **  
** [10:41] Gross, I didn’t ask

**OnigiriMiya** **  
** [10:41] Smells like almonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I really thought I’d finally get a chapter under 6k words... but of course the cooking scene ended up taking like half of the chapter.....  
> \- I have so much work to do but I also finished my finals so I just bulldozed through this chapter RIP  
> \- We’re a little over halfway through I think (THIS FIC IS SO MUCH LONGER THAN I THOUGHT AT THE OUTSET), I project that it’ll be nine-ish chapters?? We’ll see!  
> \- I wanted to give Akaashi’s dad a career that involves hands—for a while I thought about some sort of musician, but I ended up with a ceramicist/potter! I think he probably teaches it at a university! He smells like coffee.  
> \- I think I accidentally made Akaashi’s kitchen a metaphor for his heart

**Author's Note:**

> -Find me on Twitter [@sparksandsalt](https://twitter.com/sparksandsalt)!


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